As part of its strategy to make tax digital, HMRC has been encouraging taxpayers to switch to paperless communication via their online personal tax account. As a result if you consent to paperless filing HMRC will post notices on your online account and send you an email notifying you about the new message. To read the…
Category: Taxation
What’s next for Making Tax Digital?
As you are probably already aware, there will be no further new taxes introduced, or changes to the threshold for VAT in 2020, so the next major change in MTD will not be until 2021 at the earliest. However, there are a couple of points in relation to the VAT process of which businesses should…
Have you received a ‘nudge’ letter?
A number of businesses and individuals have received letters from HMRC requesting detailed information about subjects ranging from rental accommodation and offshore income to the employment status of contractors. What’s going on, and how should you respond? HMRC’s Connect computer system collects data from public and private sources, which HMRC uses as the basis for…
Banks move to clamp down on contractors
Barclays and Lloyds have become the latest big businesses to inform contractors that their engagements would not extend beyond the introduction of new off-payroll working rules to the private sector next April. Contracts will instead be arranged on a PAYE or umbrella firm basis. The move is the latest in a string of similar statements…
New VAT registrations and Making Tax Digital
The process for registering for VAT is unchanged. A business that needs to (or chooses to) register for VAT for the first time should follow the current process to register for VAT and the VAT registration guidance on gov.uk. If the taxable turnover of the business in the previous 12 months is over the VAT registration…
Making Tax Digital has arrived
Making Tax Digital has arrived. From now on, most VAT-registered companies with a turnover above £85,000 will need to keep digital records and submit their VAT returns in a new way. For these businesses, the old system won’t work anymore. HMRC has been busy updating its guidance with the publication of ‘The future of tax…
Making Tax Digital – accounting software
Making tax digital is the government’s plan to take information for tax purposes directly from business owners’ online accounting software with no recourse to their accountant. This explains why HMRC are so keen to work with Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent. This move was foreseeable, and should be less of a shock to forward-thinking business owners…
The death of the tax return?
In March 2015, when George Osborne outlined the new concept of “making tax easier”, he said it would herald the death of the tax return. All the tax information relevant to an individual would be gathered into the taxpayer’s digital tax account, and the annual paper tax return would be consigned to history. This was…
Don’t be caught out by the new Annual Investment Allowance limits
The annual investment allowance (AIA) allows expenditure up to a set limit on most types of plant and equipment (but not cars) to be written off for tax purposes in the first year. It is very useful, because full tax relief for such expenditure might otherwise not be obtained for many years.…
The role of the accountant is changing
2016 will probably mark the tipping point when the relationship between business owners, their accountants and HMRC changed forever. The role of the accountant in the year-end compliance process is already shifting from one of being the ‘gatekeeper’ of the information flow to HMRC and Companies House to the application of review, checking, correction and…
