A new Treasury Minister

Victoria Atkins MP was appointed as the new Financial Secretary to the Treasury with responsibility for the tax system and HMRC. We wrote an introductory letter to her and highlighted again the pressing need for tax simplification and that the decision to abolish the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) announced on 23 September should be reconsidered, given its role in highlighting and building consensus for tax simplification measures.

Wyman Symposium – Regulation of the tax profession

On 1 November, we held our annual Wyman Symposium on ‘Regulation of the Tax Profession – is it the way forward?’ This was our first in-person event since the start of lockdown and to celebrate we had assembled an excellent international panel of speakers to examine the topic. It was a thought-provoking evening with lots of very good questions – we could have gone on all evening! We also covered all bases with both a livestream option and a recording available. If you missed it, it’s not too late to watch it – just follow the links on our website.

House of Lords enquiry into R&D

On 31 October, our Technical Manager Richard Jones gave oral evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee inquiry into the proposed changes to R&D tax relief and how the problems of ‘rogue’ R&D claims should be addressed. We followed up the oral evidence session with a written response.

Making Tax Digital for VAT

Although Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT has been mandatory since April 2022, six months later there were still many thousands of traders that hadn’t signed up for it. HMRC had planned to close its existing VAT online service from 1 November but, following representations from the Tax Faculty and others about the significant number of traders who would be unable to file their return and pay their VAT liabilities, the existing portal was retained to allow businesses to file returns that were due on 7 November. Members also continue to report a number of problems with the new VAT Registration Service.

Other consultations and representations

The Tax Faculty responded to HMRC’s consultation on improving the data HMRC collects from taxpayers. We recommended that HMRC should focus on improving its service standards and efficiency rather than seeking to collect data that is not required for tax purposes and which could impose significant extra admin burdens and costs on employers.

We also responded to the OTS call for evidence on hybrid and distance working. The pandemic caused an explosion in the number of individuals working from home and often from different countries, but the tax and social security contributions law and international agreements have not caught up with current working practices.

We also contributed to a number of responses to a European Commission consultation on potential legislative measures to tackle the role of those who help enable the facilitation of evasion and/or aggressive tax planning in the EU. As a member body of CFE Tax Advisers Europe and Accountancy Europe, the Tax Faculty was actively involved in the development of the representations from both bodies and, in addition, we also wrote jointly with the Chartered Institute of Taxation to the European Commission to provide further feedback on the UK experience in this area.  

Tax Faculty Committee meetings

During the period there were meetings of the Tax Policy and Reputation Committee, the VAT and Duties Committee, the Employment Taxes and NIC Committee and the Private Client Committee. In addition, there were inaugural meetings of the newly reformed Business Tax Committee and a newly created Duties sub-committee. We also joined a meeting of the Tax Directors of the Global Accounting Alliance.

Webinars

Our latest webinar focused on the potential VAT and duty benefits of operating within a Freeport area. Our thanks are due to presenters Liam Dushynsky of PKF Francis Clark and Damon Wright of Evelyn Partners and to Tax Faculty Technical Manager Ed Saltmarsh for moderating. If you missed the webinar you can watch it by following the links on our website.