What financial help is available if you have children & the tax implication, if any
Today’s Blog is concerned with what you can claim from our wonderful government if you have children, together with any tax implications, such as the dreaded High Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBIC). As everyone knows, raising children can be expensive, but according to the charity ‘Action-For-Children’, there is a range of financial support available, with […]
HMRC have been defrauded £50m by scammers
Today I’m reporting on a scam affecting HMRC, in which our wonderful tax authority has admitted that it has lost a minimum of £50m, with around 100,000 accounts being hit in a sophisticated phishing fraud. The scam by cybercriminals, occurred in 2024, with the perpetrators using stolen personal data to access or create thousands of […]
Why is HMRC not taxing the wealthy?
Rachel Reeves has a big problem on tax, one of many I hear you cry. She is being assailed with demands from both her own party and the opposition, to spend more, but this means she will have to raise more tax to avoid breaking her own self-imposed fiscal rule of not borrowing to fund […]
The UK’s rank on the International Tax Competitiveness Index
What is the International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI), I hear you cry. Well, put simply, it’s an index compiled by The Tax Foundation. This is an international not-for-profit research think tank based in Washington, D.C. that collects data and publishes research studies on tax policies, both in the USA and worldwide. Its stated mission is […]
Is AI the answer to HMRC’s dismal failings?
Déjà vu, which translates from French as ‘already seen’, is with us yet again with the latest PAC (Public Accounts Committee) annual report on HMRC’s performance. They have delivered a scathing verdict on the tax office and have highlighted two key areas of failure, namely that costs are rising sharply, whilst the level of performance […]
Progressive VAT – will Rachel Reeves bring it in?
Today’s Blog concerns a proposal to introduce a progressive VAT regime via real-time adjustments to rates based on an individual’s economic position, as is currently been introduced in Uraguay. BackgroundUruguay is in the process of becoming one of the first countries (Uzbekistan was the first in 2024) to roll out live VAT rate adjustments for […]
UK Tax Questions Answered by Shrewsbury Accountant No. 47
With chaos still raging in the financial markets because of Trump’s Tariffs, the tax implications of Rachel Reeves’ second budget or as she prefers to call it ‘The Spring Fiscal Statement’, are still uncertain. So, as it’s been several months since I last looked through my postbag for some interesting tax related questions, here’s the […]
Will Trump’s tariffs have an impact on your pension?
If you have a pension, there’s a high probability that a significant part of it will be invested in the stock market. However, if the markets fall sharply, as has happened recently, the size of your pension pot is also likely to have dropped in value. This is especially so, if your pension fund has […]
Tax avoidance or is it tax evasion?
Rachel Reeves in her recent Spring Statement (that suspiciously resembled a second budget) announced that she was in the process of launching an all-out attack on the tax avoidance industry. She did not however clarify what activities she considers as tax avoidance and which are in the category of tax evasion. HMRC have now issued […]
Dan Neidle the Martin Lewis of tax
In his new BBC radio series ‘Untaxing’, broadcast on BBC Sounds, Dan Neidle, tax lawyer, investigative journalist and commentator, has produced a radio series giving tax a makeover. His new programme reports on various stories designed to engage even those who have never given the VAT classification of a Jaffa Cake a moment’s thought. Whoever thought […]
