Yesterday (23 March) saw the UK’s first ever ‘tax day’, with the Treasury publishing over 30 tax publications.
Background
More than 30 policy updates, consultations and documents that would traditionally be published at Budget have been released as part of the HMRC’s 10-year plan for “building a trusted, modern tax administration system”. In case you missed anything yesterday, here’s our three main details to takeaway:
1. Capital Gains Tax (CGT) reform spared once again
Despite a general nervousness that CGT was in line for changes, these concerns did not come to fruition.
Last year, the Chancellor commissioned a review from the Office for Tax Simplification (OTS), which suggested a series of wide-reaching potential reforms were in the pipeline. For now at least, these appear to be parked, which arguably may be acting as an economic stimulus in itself.
2. Inheritance Tax adjusted but not reformed
Inheritance Tax saw some improvements, with much of the red tape of its administration being cut for more than 200,000 estates each year and, in turn, significantly reducing the amount of paperwork many grieving families are required to fill out.
Similar to CGT, reforms to Inheritance Tax will likely be seen further down the line, but there’s nothing to note of significance for now.
3. Tightening up on tax avoidance promotions
An impetus was placed on clamping down on promoters of tax avoidance schemes, with a recommendation to give HMRC more power to tackle those that try to market tax avoidance schemes to UK investors.
Proposals included:
‣ Ensuring HMRC can protect their position by securing or freezing a promoter’s assets
‣ Closing down companies that promote avoidance schemes and disqualifying their directors
‣ Supporting taxpayers to identify and exit avoidance schemes.
What else?
Also included in the documents were a review of business rates, aviation tax and a small policy tightening on business rates relief for part-time holiday lets.
If you would like to discuss anything in this article within the context of your own business, contact our Tax team on 01788 539000 or 0116 261 0061.