Self-employed workers in the UK have reported their struggles to acquire a mortgage, after HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) changed the way it issues details of tax calculations and tax year overviews for submission with mortgage applications. Until recently accountants and workers themselves have been able to obtain a paper copy of form SA302 that lenders require in order to complete the mortgage application process. Read more…

New analysis of HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC’s) data has revealed that the department collected an additional £3.4 billion from small and medium-sized businesses in the tax year to April 2017.  Investigations in the 2016/17 tax year by HMRC’s compliance department saw 49 per cent of the additional revenue collected come from VAT investigations into SMEs – an increase of four per cent on the Read more…

A new online forum has been launched by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) which has been designed to help company owners resolve simple issues related to starting and growing a company.  The new website provides a message board, discussions and a webchat where business owners can query HMRC’s tax experts in real time. Categories listed on the site currently include starting, managing and growing a Read more…

Taxpayers across the UK will have begun to receive a simple assessment (form PA302) from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), which will ask for payment of tax that cannot be coded out under PAYE. A simple assessment is a tax assessment made by HMRC, which was launched with the aim of taking taxpayers out of the self-assessment regime where they have a small amount of Read more…

From July this year, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has been utilising its new system of dynamic coding, which allows for in-year adjustments (IYAs) of a person’s tax code.  Under the new regime, codes can be adjusted by the Revenue to reflect sudden changes in an employee’s circumstances as soon as HMRC becomes aware of the changes, rather than waiting to reflect this in the Read more…

The Government has begun to publish a number of position papers which aim to set out how it intends to negotiate with the EU during the Brexit process. The proposals, released at the end of August, set out how the trade in goods and services between the European market and the UK should continue once the country leaves in March 2019. They argue that goods Read more…

According to the Government’s latest Labour Market Enforcement Strategy report HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is to receive an additional £5.3 million of funding in 2017/18 to ensure businesses are paying employees the national minimum wage (NMW) and national living wage (NLW). This follows on from a previous increase of £20 million in 2016, which has allowed the team to expand to more than 360 Read more…

From January next year businesses across the UK need to ensure that consumers are no longer being charged extra for paying by debit or credit card, according to new legislation from the Government. It is thought that in 2010 alone customers spent £473 million on charges from card payments, which is why the Treasury has announced that businesses will no longer be able to add Read more…

A new survey from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has revealed that more than 40 per cent of UK businesses believe that Brexit has hurt their investment plans. The Confederation’s latest Investment Survey clearly asked 357 companies in the UK how the UK’s decision to leave the EU had affected their plans, with nearly 150 saying that they changed their plans to spend as Read more…

Cash-in-hand payments should be replaced with technology driven alternatives in hopes of collecting up to £6 billion more in tax – this is the conclusion of a Government-commissioned review conducted by Matthew Taylor, head of the think-tank the Royal Society of Arts. The 116-page report, entitled Taylor Review of Modern Work Practices, was commissioned to explore modern employment practices in the UK, in particular how the Read more…