Business owners in vulnerable sectors: predominantly retailers, leisure and entertainment trades, will have seen their hard-won capital all but exhausted by the needs to meet fixed costs when income generation has been restricted or eliminated by lock-down directives. And this is in spite of the valiant attempts by Rishi Sunak and his team at the

Specialist anti-avoidance legislation gives HMRC significant powers to demand upfront payment of disputed tax from taxpayers using avoidance schemes. This means that taxpayers that have used a tax avoidance scheme may have to make a payment of the amount that relates to their use of the scheme before the final amount has been agreed or determined.

Lloyds Bank have issued the following updates on their business banking portal: Opening a Start-up Business Current Account – Important Information Please note, new customers cannot open a Business Current Account to access the Bounce Back Loan Scheme. To access the Bounce Back Loan Scheme, you must have had an account with us before 2

Most accountants will have little experience or interest in the regulations that now govern the movement of goods to and from the EU. A reminder that clients inexperienced in dealing with the red-tape involved should probably consider using the services of a qualified freight forwarder, customs agent/brokers or fast parcel operators. The GOV.UK website lists

HMRC's published guidance titled ‘Check a list of genuine HMRC contacts’ has been updated. The list is intended to help taxpayers verify if recent contacts purporting to be from HMRC were genuine or a scam. The guidance contains a list of emails, phone calls, letters and text messages recently issued by HMRC. The list can be useful

It is difficult to appreciate the levels of stress that you may be under.  Frankly, present conditions, exaggerated as they are by lock-down, are unprecedented. For most practitioners, January each year is already best described as “panic stations” as firms dash towards the SA filing deadline at the end of the month. This is compounded

In a landmark 2005 House of Lords case (commonly referred to as the Wilkinson case), the UK courts considered a significant number of Extra Statutory Concessions (ESCs) published by HMRC. The decision by the House of Lords questioned the ability of HMRC to make use of certain administrative discretions (such as an ESC). An ESC

Practitioners need to prepare for the expected migration of HMRC’s VAT registered traders from the VAT mainframe (VTM) to the MTD compliant Enterprise Tax Management Platform (ETMP) from March 2021. The move means that all VAT return management will be on the same platform. However, HMRC are withdrawing the facility for VAT returns to be

The Statutory Sick Pay (General) (Coronavirus Amendment) (No. 7) Regulations 2020 came into force on 24 December 2020. The regulations have further amended the Statutory Sick Pay (General) Regulations 1982 to reflect recent government changes to the self-isolation requirements (in particular, the reduction of the self-isolation period from 14 to ten days) where a person

A summary of the new lock-down provisions for England have been published.  The Going to work section says: You may only leave your home for work if you cannot reasonably work from home. Where people cannot work from home – including, but not limited to, people who work in critical national infrastructure, construction, or manufacturing