I am angry! I have just taken a call from a local accountant who is worried that her client is being misled with regard to their R&D claim. On reviewing the claim, she told the client that they should remove rent, rates and interest costs as they didn't qualify. However, the client told her that [...]
The press have been reporting it and it's been doing the rounds of Twitter this week as well. "It" is the story of Florence Coke's bill for unpaid VAT. The story has, as this type of story often does, generated a certain amount of interest and frivolity. "Oh look, a bill for almost £1bn, how absurd." [...]
You can't fail to have heard about the new Patent Box regime: advisers like me have been tweeting and blogging about it, the press have been writing about it (often quite negatively), MPs on the Public Accounts Committee have been talking about it and George Osborne mentioned it again in his Budget on 20 March. [...]
There really isn’t long to go before the UK’s new Patent Box regime comes into effect. Relevant profits arising from qualifying patents on or after 1 April 2013 will be taxed at a reduced rate of 10% if you elect into the Patent Box. The most important thing to understand about the Patent Box is [...]
It is impossible now to avoid hearing on the news, or reading in the press, comments about "tax avoidance" and whatever the latest soundbite might be. Today it is the "naming and shaming" of scheme promoters who are "currently winning what appears to be a game of cat and mouse with HMRC" (according to the [...]
With alarming predictability, the usual suspects are lining up to blame the likes of Amazon and Play for the demise of HMV. It's their fault, apparently, because they are "tax avoiders" and are, therefore, able to undercut high street stores such as HMV. This mantra is then taken up by the wider public and repeated [...]
Draft legislation, for inclusion in FB 2013, was published today. I have prepared two notes covering the following proposals: The introduction of an Above The Line Credit for R&D - now called an R&D Expenditure Credit. The temporary increase in Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) from £25,000 to £250,000 with effect from 1 January 2013.
There is a debate underway at the moment about the UK's Corporation Tax regime. Well, when I say 'debate', I guess I really mean 'argument'. And when I say that it's 'about' the UK's Corporation Tax regime, I suppose that what I really mean is that the CT regime sort of features in the argument, [...]
This morning on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Simon Jack, a business reporter, ended his short piece with a comment on the fact that Tui Travel paid very little UK CT last year, despite record profits. This, he correctly stated, was due to their use of brought forward losses. Unfortunately, he then commented that this [...]
HMRC has just published R&C Brief 32/12 in which it updates its views on the eligibility of polytunnels for Plant & Machinery Allowances. Until now, HMRC has considered that most polytunnels are either fixed structures or, in some situations, premises or setting. In either case, that would prevent them from qualifying as Plant for capital allowances [...]