Archive:December 2018

Please find below all the articles from December 2018.

Company vans update

Monday, December 3, 2018

A charge to income tax will generally arise if a company van is made available, by reason of the employment, to an employee or to a member of his or her family or household. It must be made available without a transfer of ownership from the employer to the employee. Since 2016/17, when the £8,500 earnings threshold for most benefits-in-kind was abolished, the charge applies regardless of the employee’s earnings rate. The charge will however, be proportionately reduced if the van is only available for part of a…

VAT reverse charge in the construction industry

Monday, December 3, 2018

Autumn Budget 2018 announced a new measure, designed to counter fraud in the construction industry, which has seen gangs of criminal traders artificially extending the chain of supply of labour services, then failing to account for all the output VAT due to HMRC by collecting the VAT on the supplies (sales) and then going “missing” before passing the VAT on to HMRC.

The proposed change, which is scheduled to take effect from 1 October 2019, will mean that for certain specified supplies of construction services, the customer will be…

PGLs for employers

Monday, December 3, 2018

The Department for Education has launched a new Student Loan product known as Postgraduate Loans (PGLs). From April 2019, individuals will be able to start loan repayments of this type through PAYE, so employers need to be aware of their new obligations.

Broadly, if an individual has a PGL:

– HMRC will send their employer a new Postgraduate start notice (PGL1) to ask them to start taking PGL deductions
– HMRC will send their employer a new Postgraduate stop notice (PGL2) to ask them to stop taking PGL deductions
– employers will…

HMRC warn of tax scams targeting university students

Monday, December 3, 2018

HMRC have published a series of warnings that university students are being targeted by scammers with fake tax refunds in an effort to steal money and personal details.

The scammers are using seemingly legitimate university email addresses (for example ‘@uc.ac.uk’) in order to avoid detection, and HMRC have received thousands of fraud reports from students at colleges across the UK.

This is the first time HMRC has seen a tax scam attack directly targeting university students in such high volumes.

HMRC never inform people about potential tax refunds by email, text…