Measures to help taxi drivers to buy cleaner vehicles, remove barriers for investment in the oil and gas industry, and tackle tax avoidance using profit fragmentation are just some of the key policies that will be legislated for in the Finance Bill 2018-19, which was published in draft on 6 July 2018.

Under the Government’s new timetable, the draft legislation has been published now for consultation purposes until 31 August 2018. It will become Finance Act 2019, when it receives Royal Assent in March 2019, so the new law…

HMRC have released interim guidance for agents on the new EU Mandatory Disclosure Rules and new reporting requirements for intermediaries, which apply from June 2018.

Under the new mandatory EU tax disclosure rules, information will be exchanged between member states on a quarterly basis. Intermediaries will first have to report by 31 August 2020, on any arrangements where the first step has been taken, after the directive enters into force on 25 June 2018.

Broadly, the EU directive on administrative cooperation applies to intermediaries who design, market, organise, or…

HMRC’s new Trusts Register is designed to provide a single point of access for trustees and their agents to register and update their records online, replacing the paper 41G(Trust) form (which was withdrawn from April 2017) and the ad hoc process for trustees to notify changes in their circumstances. Initially, new trusts had until 5 October 2017 to register, but this deadline was subsequently extended to 5 January 2018. The registration deadline for existing trusts was also extended to 5 March 2018. Registration must be done online using…

The adverse effects of being inactive can of course have a major impact on health and wellbeing. According to a recent government report, workers can spend up to three-quarters of their day sitting down, which contributes to a range of preventable health conditions, including the two leading causes of workplace absence: back injuries and stress, depression or anxiety. In 2016/17, 1.3 million workers suffered from work-related ill-health, which equated to 25.7 million working days lost. This has been estimated to cost £522 per employee, and up to £32…

The confusion over HMRC’s application of the IR35 legislation continues after an IT contractor successfully appealed to the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) against a tax charge of some £26,000 in connection with a project he was working on with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

In Jensal Software Ltd v HMRC Commrs [2017] TC 00667, the IT contractor, Ian Wells, successfully appealed a tax bill relating to a succession of contracts during the 2012/13 tax year. Wells provided his services through his limited company, Jensal Software Ltd, to…