HMRC has published a consultation document entitled: Strengthening sanctions for tax avoidance – A consultation on detailed proposals. It was released 22 July 2015 and the closing date for comments is 14 October 2015. Legislation to enact the issues discussed will be introduced in the Finance Bill 2016. The scope... read more →

The Summer Budget 2015 has now morphed into the Summer Finance Bill, officially known as the Finance Bill 2015-16. It has already completed the first and second reading and when parliament reconvenes after the summer recess it will move forward to the committee stage 8 September 2015. After the committee... read more →

George Osborne opened the debate last week on the tax changes outlined in his Summer Budget. Many of the changes will not affect taxpayers until after the 1st or 5th April next year. Indeed, he set out his stall for progressive changes across a number of taxes until the end... read more →

Just in case you have missed the legal challenges made to rein back the new tax-free child care plans, the government (Wednesday 1 July) welcomed a judgment from the Supreme Court that found the government’s proposals for delivering Tax-Free Childcare to be clearly lawful. It also confirmed that, as a... read more →

It would seem that HMRC are stepping up their plans to digitise their interactions with tax payers. We have reproduced below a posting to HMRC’s blog (they have a blog!) by Mike Potter, Digital Services, entitled: Digital HMRC: a snapshot of what's in the pipeline “As all know if you’re... read more →

In previous blogs in this series we have discussed the potential for complicating the tax affairs of individuals who live and work in the border counties of England and Scotland. In the past week, two very interesting matters have been publicised regarding the impact of SRIT – the Scottish rate... read more →

If clients were set up in business on or before 1 April 2012 they should be monitoring their staging date: the date on which automatic enrolment duties apply from. To do this, the client’s PAYE reference can be entered on the Pensions Regulator website at http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/employers/staging-date.aspx If you already provide... read more →

Most businesses that search online for business or tax advice will type in their local area and a word like “accountants” and see what comes up on the search engines lists. Contrary to popular opinion, not all visitors start at page one – internet users are savvy to the paid... read more →

Would your staff recognise an opportunity to cross-sell more services to clients? In some respects, your staff should be effective ambassadors for your practice. They should be able to spot billing opportunities with their eyes closed, but unless you have struck lucky, you will have to train them to be... read more →

Did you know? 20 is the smallest primitive abundant number. 20 can be written as the sum of three Fibonacci numbers: 13+5+2. 20/20 can mean that Specsavers will never make any money from you. 20 is the optimum number of quarter or half turns required to solve a Rubik cube... read more →