Chancellor Philip Hammond has delivered his 2019 Spring Statement to the House of Commons. A supporting Written Ministerial Statement (WMS) provides more detail on some of the announcements in the Spring Statement, and sets out details of other forthcoming government policies.

Mr Hammond opened his Statement by acknowledging that the most urgent task at present is to ‘lift the uncertainty’, but he also added a positive note, stating that the ‘economy itself is remarkably robust’.

The Chancellor indicated that if the UK does leave the EU with a deal,…

HMRC have updated their online guidance on disclosing unpaid tax to include information on authorising an agent to deal with a disclosure made through the Digital Disclosure Service (DDS).

The DDS gives individuals and companies a chance to bring their affairs up to date in a simple, straightforward way. Anyone who owes tax on your income you must tell us about any unpaid tax now. Anyone who owes tax on income or gains must tell HMRC about any unpaid tax. They will then have 90 days to calculate and…

HMRC have published Spotlight 47, which provides guidance on tax avoidance schemes that try to avoid the income tax charge on distributions when a company is being wound up.

In recent years, HMRC have endeavoured to prevent schemes being used by shareholders to take advantage of more favourable capital gains tax rates when extracting value from their company.

Until 6 April 2016, under arrangements known as ‘phoenixism’, an individual shareholder who intended to carry on the company’s activities could arrange matters enabling them to wind up the company and receive…

For accounting purposes, cash transactions between a director and a personal or family company are recorded through the director’s loan account. At the end of an accounting period, if the director owes the company money (i.e. the account is considered overdrawn), and the company is close (broadly, one that is controlled by five or fewer shareholders (participators), there will be tax consequences to consider.

A tax charge will arise under the Corporation Tax Act 2009, s 455 where a director’s loan account is overdrawn at the end of…

The Making Tax Digital (MTD) pilot has been opened up to all businesses that will be mandated from April 2019 (i.e., the first VAT accounting period starting on or after 1 April 2019) to use compatible software to submit information directly to HMRC.

The pilot was opened at the end of 2018 to partnerships and VAT Flat Rate Scheme (FRS) users, and the following entities are now also able to join:

– EU traders
– businesses who file monthly VAT returns
– businesses that use non-standard VAT…