OECD tells UK to ‘hold fire’ on new tech giants tax January 22, 2020 The UK has been told by the OECD to “hold fire” on a new tax on big technology companies planned for April. The secretary general of the organisation, which is tasked with brokering a global compromise on the issue of tech giants not paying enough tax, said there would be the risk of “a cacophony” [...]
Chancellor’s Budget on 11 March – to tax or not to tax January 17, 2020 | City Talk Having inadvertently set a record by having a year without a Budget, the first time this has happened since the introduction of income tax, the Chancellor’s choice of Wednesday 11 March, rather than “February” as stated in the election campaign, gives the busy Treasury a little more time to work up the ideas that were [...]
EY TaxChat: making Self Assessment quick, easy and cost effective January 17, 2020 | City Talk According to HMRC, 11.5m UK taxpayers were required to complete a Self Assessment return in 2019. EY research¹ shows that many worry about getting something wrong if they do it themselves (33 per cent) and find the process complicated and time consuming (15 per cent). A further 12 per cent also said they can’t afford [...]
A tourist tax like Edinburgh’s could be the answer to London’s funding squeeze December 12, 2019 London is one of the most-visited cities on the planet. These visitors bring investment, diversity and vibrancy — and their numbers are rising. By 2025, London is projected to attract over 40m overnight visitors a year, up from 31m in 2016. But while the tourism industry is a boon to the national economy and employment, [...]
Labour’s rejection of conventional economic theory ignores important insights November 27, 2019 One of the first tasks facing whoever becomes chancellor after the General Election will be choosing the next governor of the Bank of England. Getting to make this choice would be a key step in the plans of Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell to shake up the Bank of England, but his radicalism is not [...]
Boris Johnson is right to delay corporation tax cuts November 21, 2019 Boris Johnson showed a lot of guts to go to the CBI Conference and announce that he was delaying a planned corporation tax cut in order to fund public services. This was a speech which was long overdue. Since 2010, governments have given away corporation tax cuts worth over £60bn. This figure doesn’t include the [...]
What is IR35? Everything you need to know about the tax coming to the private sector November 6, 2019 After rolling out into the public sector in April 2017, HMRC’s controversial IR35 tax is set to hit private sector contractors in 2020. And it promises to cost workers a big chunk of change: one estimate suggests contractors could pay 25 per cent more in tax. Self-employed contractors are now grappling with the legislation, which [...]
Tax cuts could do for our economy today what the Reformation did 502 years ago October 31, 2019 On this day in 1517, German monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints’ church in Wittenberg. In so doing, Luther set in motion a series of events which would have a dramatic impact on the political landscape of Europe, transform the economy, and alter the lives of ordinary people [...]
Longer prison sentences given out for tax evasion October 14, 2019 Prison sentence lengths for tax evasion rose by 10 per cent on average last year as the taxman pushed for tougher punishments to dodgng payments. The average sentence for the deliberate non-payment of tax rose to two years and seven months in 2018 – an increase of two months on 2017’s figures – according to [...]
Facebook pays just £28m in UK corporation tax in 2018 after sales worth almost £800m October 11, 2019 Facebook paid just £28m in UK corporation tax in 2018 according to its latest filing at Companies House. This is despite it having recognised sales worth £797m with a gross profit of £763.4m for the year. Read more: OECD targets tech giants as it shakes up global tax rules It is the latest example of [...]