The government’s Gift Aid scheme aims to maximise the value of donations made to charities whilst allowing most UK taxpayers to benefit from tax relief on the gift. Since the scheme allows payments to be related to a previous year, the end of the tax year is a good time to give the matter a review.
The Gift Aid scheme allows individuals to claim tax relief on making one-off or regular gifts to charity and there are no lower or upper limits on donations. When a payment is made,…
Read MoreThe 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…
As the end of the current tax year approaches, it is worthwhile making a check to ensure that the various tax-efficient savings opportunities have been utilised wherever possible. The following paragraphs highlight some of the areas where savings may be made.
ISAs
The maximum annual investment limit for Individual Savings Accounts (SAs) will remain at £20,000 for 2019/20. The limit effectively allows a couple to save £40,000 a year between them and receive interest on the investment tax free. There will also be no capital gains tax to pay when…
Read MoreIn broad terms, the Employment Allowance (EA) is available to most employers and should enable them to reduce the amount of National Insurance Contributions (NICs) they have to pay by up to £3,000 per year. The eligibility rules changed from April 2016, and the Autumn Budget 2018 announced further changes expected to take effect from April 2020. It is worth checking to make sure that a limited company is still eligible to benefit from this tax incentive.
Employers may generally claim the EA if they are a business (including…
Read MoreBusinesses considering investing more than £200,000 in plant and machinery could benefit from a change to the capital allowances rules in January 2019, which should allow them to obtain tax relief at an earlier time.
Capital allowances are treated as a trading expense of a particular accounting period, so they can potentially increase a loss, or turn a profit into a loss for tax purposes, which in turn, will impact on the amount of tax payable by a business. Where a business is considering expenditure on qualifying items, it…
Read MoreThe VAT rules for businesses suppling digital services to private consumers in other member states change with effect from 1 January 2019.
From that date, the place of supply will be the UK where both:
– a UK business is not established in any other EU member state; and
– the total value of cross-border digital sales is less than £8,818 in the current and preceding calendar years.
Businesses affected will no longer need to register for VAT in other EU countries where they have consumers or use the VAT Mini One…
Read MoreA 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…
Read MoreAutumn 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…
Read MoreThe 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 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…
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