How to take the headache out of paying your small business tax bill January 30, 2017 The self-assessment tax deadline is tomorrow, and it isn’t just individual taxpayers feeling the heat. Many small businesses, particularly those structured as limited liability partnerships, will also need to file their tax returns and make payments to HMRC. Tax – whether corporation tax, business rates or VAT – can be a tricky issue for SMEs. We [...]
Watch out footballers: MPs want HMRC to get tougher on the super-rich January 27, 2017 We heard earlier this week that HMRC's Affluent Unit had almost doubled in size as it gears up to squeeze revenues from the wealthy middle class. And now the taxman's under pressure from MPs on taxing the super-rich. The Public Accounts Committee has said HMRC needed to crack down on the perception there was "one [...]
Savers are taking more and more small payments from their pensions January 25, 2017 New data from HMRC shows savers are taking more regular, and smaller, lump sums from their pensions. Former chancellor George Osborne introduced the pensions freedom regime in 2015, allowing savers to take up to a quarter of their retirement savings as a lump sum without paying tax. And HMRC says that £9.2bn has been taken [...]
Filing your tax return for 2015-16: The questions you want answered January 25, 2017 If you've put off doing your tax return, I don’t blame you. It is hard to find the motivation to forage around for all those documents, only to part with your hard-earned cash. The bad news is that if you haven’t already got the ball rolling on your self-assessment form for the 2015-16 tax year, [...]
From holiday flights to luxury watches and Armani jeans, HMRC unveils the UK’s most outrageous expenses claims January 25, 2017 International flights, Friday night drinks and betting slips were among the dodgiest expense claims rejected by the taxman last year. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has released a list of the most outlandish items taxpayers submitted as expenses on their annual returns for 2014-15. Taxpayers are allowed to claim deductions for genuine costs, such as work-related [...]
HMRC’s Affluent Unit has almost doubled in size in the last four years as it looks to squeeze revenues from wealthy middle class January 23, 2017 Tax authorities have increased the number of employees set to investigate middle-class earners, as they push to increase revenues. The UK's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has increased the number of employees at its “Affluent Unit” by 20 per cent in the last year, according to accountants Moore Stephens. There are now 395 employees at the [...]
HMRC in £468m small business tax haul January 23, 2017 Local compliance teams investigating small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) brought in substantial extra revenue to the taxman last year. HMRC has shifted its resources away from large businesses and towards SMEs, which they estimate represent 51 per cent of the country’s “tax gap”, the difference between the amount of tax collected and the amount [...]
A gentle nudge over the green rubicon: How to change social norms and make your business greener January 17, 2017 According to a government report, some 71 per cent of UK citizens are “very or fairly concerned” about climate change, while nearly the same percentage believe that it poses a high level of risk to people’s health and wellbeing. In our daily lives, concerns we may have are infrequently matched by our actions – especially [...]
National Audit Office: Concentrix £1bn tax credit outsourcing delivered savings of less than a fifth than was expected January 17, 2017 A catalogue of errors in relation to outsourcing tax credits has been laid bare in a damning report by the public spending watchdog. Highlighting a series of shortcomings, the National Audit Office (NAO) today released its findings into HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) controversial outsourcing arrangement with Concentrix. HMRC estimated £1bn of savings could be [...]
Donald Trump’s business meddling: Crony capitalism to a Tea January 17, 2017 To understand why many large businesses and pro-market US policy wonks are anxious about a Donald Trump presidency, one has to understand the lessons of the Tea Party. No, not the recent grassroots phenomenon caricatured in the UK media. I’m talking about the Boston Tea Party of 1773 – in which American colonists, belonging to [...]