Q and A July 26, 2012 DIRECTOR, DOUGLAS AND GORDON Q I’ve had my property on since March and, after the Budget, knocked £350,000 off the price to get under the £2m SDLT bracket. I’ve still not sold. What are my options, given I can’t afford to go lower? A No comfort here but many sellers are in the same situation. [...]
Tax and morality: Complicated laws make gaming the system inevitable July 23, 2012 I RECENTLY spent a family holiday in a static caravan in northern France. As we sat outside with a glass of wine, my wife and I wondered why the caravan had wheels – it seemed unlikely that they would need to be moved, and I doubted they would carry its weight. Perhaps it has something [...]
Auditors blame overwork for HMRC’s £5.2bn tax write-offs June 28, 2012 THE BRITISH taxman wrote off £5.2bn last year and made billions more in errors as it was overwhelmed by its growing workload, the National Audit Office said yesterday. The audit unearthed a “large increase” in the amount of tax liabilities that HM Revenue and Customs decided not to pursue over the last two years. Around [...]
40,000 HMRC workers strike over job cuts June 25, 2012 MORE than 40,000 employees at HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) went on strike yesterday, in a dispute over job cuts that has become embroiled in the row over high-profile individuals avoiding tax. The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) claimed that more than three quarters of its HMRC members walked out in protest at plans to [...]
Carr apologises for ‘terrible error of judgement’ June 21, 2012 COMEDIAN Jimmy Carr said he made “a terrible error of judgement” in using a legal offshore tax scheme to reduce his payments to HMRC. “I appreciate as a comedian, people will expect me to ‘make light’ of this situation, but I’m not going to in this statement,” Carr said on Twitter. “Although I’ve been advised [...]
We need a flat tax with no loopholes to reduce avoidance June 20, 2012 HYPOCRISY barely starts to describe it. Left-wing comedians – you know, the kind that love to attack the City, ridicule aspirational values, question the motives of those in business and who wear their champagne socialism on their sleeve – are not supposed to be extreme tax avoiders. So the news that Jimmy Carr, one such [...]
Auditor backs HMRC tax deals with Goldman June 13, 2012 BRITAIN’S top tax officials were justified in making secret deals worth billions of pounds with major five major corporates, a report says today. HM Revenue & Customs achieved a “good” outcome for the public purse by resolving a series of long-running disputes with the five unnamed firms but was criticised for bypassing proper governance procedures over the [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING June 12, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES Hildebrand takes Blackrock role Philipp Hildebrand, the former chairman of the Swiss National Bank, is joining BlackRock as vice-chairman and will oversee the firm’s largest institutional client relationships outside of the US. Treasury rejects pay levy on City The Treasury has rejected a plan to get the City to pay the salaries of [...]
Rangers at risk of relegation with vote set for top flight clubs June 12, 2012 CRISIS-HIT Scottish giants Rangers could be made to start next season in the fourth tier after a creditors’ deal was sunk by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Their future in the top flight now rests in the hands of other Scottish Premier League clubs, who will vote on the matter, possibly as early as Monday. [...]
UK received no corporation tax from Vodafone June 10, 2012 VODAFONE, one of the FTSE 100’s biggest companies, did not pay a penny of corporation tax in the UK last year. But the telecoms giant said it makes it main contribution to the UK economy via investment rather than taxes. “Last year, Vodafone’s UK capital expenditure went up from £516m to £575m – which means [...]