The government has introduced a temporary tax exemption and National Insurance disregard to ensure that home office equipment purchased by employees as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, will not attract tax and NICs liabilities where reimbursed by the employer. This temporary change applies for 2019/20 from 16 March 2020, and for the 2020/21 tax year.

To be eligible for the exemption the expenditure must meet the following two conditions:

– The equipment is obtained for the sole purpose of enabling the employee to work from home as a result…

On Monday the 4th May 2020 a new 100% government backed loan, called the Bounce Back Loan has been launched to help small and medium-sized businesses. The loans are available directly from banks and other lenders (a list of accredited lenders will be released by HMRC). As the loan is 100% backed by the government, this should result in loans reaching businesses within days, providing immediate support to those that need it as easily as possible.

To apply the business needs to meet the eligibility criteria below:
• is based in…

HMRC have announced the postponement of phase two of their Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT project.

This ‘phase two’ required businesses to digitally link their software all the way from entry of each transaction at one end of the process through to submission of the VAT return at the other, irrespective of how many pieces of software were used.

This means the rules on maintaining digital links from original transaction to tax return will not be enforced until 1 April 2021.

Businesses now have until their first VAT return period…

We have now received updated information from Business Wales and HMRC in relation to both the Welsh Economic Resilience Fund and the Job Retention Scheme reclaim that we would like to bring to our clients attention.

The Economic Resilience Fund is £500m of funding from the Welsh Government in the form of loans and grant. The £100m loan scheme (administered by Development Bank of Wales) which we highlighted on our 26th March 2020 update e-mail is now fully subscribed. The two grant funds will open to applications…

Amid concerns about their potential impact during the coronavirus pandemic, the government has announced a one year delay to changes to the off payroll working rules, due to take effect from April 2020.

In an announcement at the end of the parliamentary debate on the Budget speech, Steve Barclay, chief secretary to the Treasury, said that the government is postponing the reforms to the off payroll working rules (known as the IR35 rules) from April 2020 to April 2021.

Off-payroll working rules, known as IR35, were introduced in 2000 to…