If fear of HMRC gets you down, cut a deal now September 30, 2010 THE Revenue net is closing in,” warns DLA Piper partner Simon Airey. “They’re creating a little bit of fear, which is what the HMRC like to do.” Sensing a public mood that is increasingly hostile to those who don’t pay UK taxes, treasury secretary Danny Alexander recently earmarked £900m for investigations into offshore tax evasion. [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING September 23, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES HARMAN COOL ON PLAN TO HALVE DEFICIT Harriet Harman has suggested that Labour should scrap its pre-election plan to halve the deficit by the end of this parliament, becoming the latest senior figure to intervene in the debate over economic direction. Labour’s interim leader said the UK was now in a “new situation” [...]
City asked to help taxman during strike September 19, 2010 THE government plans to call in City tax experts to help break a possible strike by tax collectors over spending cuts, it emerged yesterday. Ministers are understood to have asked officials to set up a unit of specialists to move in if taxmen take industrial action over cuts planned in the October spending review. Chancellor [...]
Don’t reward HMRC’s massive failure September 16, 2010 THERE is nothing worse than rewards for failure – somebody should have made that clear to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the UK’s woefully underperforming tax body. Rather than displaying some much-needed humility after disastrously miscalculating the pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) income taxes of millions of people, and failing in many other ways over the years, [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING September 16, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES VODAFONE BALKS AT BEING FORCED SELLER Vodafone’s chief executive has warned that he will not be “forced” into selling the UK group’s minority stakes in four mobile phone operators. Vittorio Colao insisted that the sale this month of Vodafone’s 3.2 per cent stake in China Mobile for £4.3bn ($6.7bn) was not done in [...]
IMPACT OF VAT September 16, 2010 Q.As a small business-owner, what do I need to know about the VAT increase? A.The standard rate of VAT is 17.5 per cent at the moment but this will be rising to 20 per cent in three months time. If you are a business that issues VAT invoices, then you must use the 20 per [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING September 15, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES BOND STRATEGY LED TO BIG WIN AFTER LEHMAN The collapse of Lehman Brothers and central banks’ unorthodox monetary policies distorted markets to create some of the biggest pricing anomalies ever documented in bond trading, according to research from leading US academics. A paper from the US National Bureau of Economic Research claims to [...]
Tax boss performs U-turn to apologise for PAYE blunders September 12, 2010 BRITAIN’S top tax official was forced into an embarrassing U-turn this weekend after initially refusing to apologise to more than a million people facing surprise bills. Dave Hartnett, permanent secretary for tax at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), said he was “deeply sorry” that administrative errors meant 1.4m people would have to pay an average [...]
How to deal with an HMRC letter September 9, 2010 LETTERS have started to drop onto the doormats of Britons advising them that they did not pay the correct amount of tax through the pay as you earn (PAYE) system during the tax years 2008-10. Those affected are likely to be those with complex streams of income. The government argued that the state of the [...]
Diamond is the right man for the job September 7, 2010 GOOD on Barclays for promoting Bob Diamond, head of the bank’s investment banking unit, to be the firm’s overall chief executive. He is the best man for the job, proving himself again with the successful integration of Lehman’s US operations. Yet given Diamond’s demonisation in the broadcast media and popular press, not least by the [...]