New government

Ministerial portfolios within the Treasury have changed following the election of a new government. The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (XST) is the minister for HMRC and has responsibility for the UK’s tax system. Alison Ring attended a roundtable meeting with the new XST, James Murray, on 24 July. In particular, he was keen to hear stakeholders’ views on which reforms to the system they would prioritise and thoughts on how the tax system can support economic growth.

HMRC service performance – we need your help!

As mentioned last month, ICAEW and CIOT have joined forces to produce an evidence-based report on HMRC service performance, which we will use for presenting the case for investment to ministers and HMRC later in the year.

We have just completed a four-week pilot of data gathering with two firms. We are extremely grateful for their participation. The pilot has provided valuable insight into the challenges that firms face when trying to engage with HMRC’s webchat and helplines and helped refine the questions that we will ask agents who sign up for the full exercise.

We are running the full data gathering exercise from 9 September for six weeks. Participants will spend up to three minutes during or after the call/webchat capturing information for each of their HMRC helpline and webchat interactions (positive or negative). We are looking for a full range of size of firms to participate – if your firm is interested in participating, please contact Caroline Miskin. 

Making Tax Digital (MTD)

Following the general election, engagement with HMRC restarted in earnest. Caroline Miskin and I attended meetings on MTD to enable HMRC to communicate what has been happening during the election period – including on the private beta testing. 

If you have clients in the MTD ITSA beta testing, please do contact Caroline Miskin to share feedback.

Professional standards

As noted in previous months, the International Ethics Standards Board (IESBA) has published a final pronouncement on tax planning and related services, which potentially will impact on the existing pan-professional code of conduct in relation to taxation. Although the IESBA code covers similar ground to the PCRT, the scope is not identical and the drafting styles are very different. The challenge now is to reconcile the two documents in such a way that preserves the industry standard nature of the PCRT, but also ensures that ICAEW, as a member of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), is complying with its obligations to incorporate changes to the IESBA code into ICAEW’s existing ethical code. 

During the month, Frank Haskew and I together with members of ICAEW’s Ethics team attended a joint meeting with ICAS and ACCA to discuss issues relating to the implementation of the IESBA tax revisions to the Code of Ethics and reconciling it with the PCRT and agreed a suggested way forward. Further updates will be published in due course.

Other areas of significant activity 

Further to the report last month that on employment tax and NIC we asked HMRC to clarify its policy on reimbursement of travelling expenses to venture capital portfolio company non-executive directors, agreed guidance has been published as TAXguide 07/24.

Caroline Miskin also attended HMRC meetings on new agent registration processes and on prioritising the gaps in and problems with HMRC digital services for agents. HMRC’s Virtual Communications Group (also attended by Caroline) considered HMRC’s plans to reduce paper communications and other proposals to change guidance and HMRC manuals.

Tax Faculty meetings

During the month there were meetings of the Duties Subcommittee, the VAT and Duties Committee, the Tax Policy and Reputation Committee, the Tax Faculty Board and the Digital Assets Working Party. We also provided an update on tax developments to ICAEW’s National Technical Advisory Committee.

Webinars, events and podcasts

The Tax Faculty hosted two webinars in July that are available to view on demand.

Richard Jones was joined by Daniel Shaw from HMRC to consider the 2023/24 transitional year for basis period reform. The webinar covered issues such as how to complete the tax return supplementary pages for 2023/24, obtaining overlap details from HMRC and the impact of (and ability to) prepare a set of accounts for a period longer than 18 months in 2023/24 only. 

Ed Saltmarsh was joined by Andrew Thurston, a Customs Duty and Indirect Tax Consultant from MHA, and Ruth Corkin, Principal at Hillier Hopkins LLP, to look at Navigating International Trade Challenges. The webinar covered: 

• delivered duty paid (DDP) incoterms;
• double duty post-Brexit;
• import VAT and ownership; 
• zero-rating exports;
• customs agents; and
• customs representation.

Our podcast series The Tax Track continues to get good feedback and engagement. I hosted the latest episode, and I was joined by my Tax Faculty colleagues Richard Jones and Stephen Relf to discuss basis period reform and the new government.