The Government published its consultation on the proposed General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR) on 12 June 2012. I have submitted my thoughts and comments on the proposals today. It is inevitable that we will end up with a GAAR of some description and I actually think that Graham Aaronson's proposals were pretty good. It was, perhaps, [...]
So now Richard Murphy et al are claiming that Usain Bolt's refusal to compete in the UK under current tax laws is "tax avoidance". Oh please! As I understand it, the world's fastest man feels that he would rather not pay any UK tax on his sponsorship/endorsement income - and I understand that he's not alone, [...]
HMRC has published a guide to the new Patent Box on its website. Leaving aside the issue that it doesn't really provide much in the way of useful guidance, I wonder why they didn't bother to make the links work properly? All of the "Read about..." links (bar one) take you to the front page [...]
During the last round of consultation on the new Patent Box, HMT and HMRC held a workshop presentation to discuss their latest thinking (as I blogged at the time). It was a very good event during which there was a lot of useful discussion about the practicalities of the new regime. At the end of [...]
OK, I know that HMRC have always denied that they want the right to regulate tax advisers but no one really believes that, do they? Just take a look at the consultation document on "Establishing the future relationship between the tax agent community and HM Revenue & Customs" published last May. In the section "Future [...]
The Patent Box regime, which comes into effect in April 2013, will provide valuable relief for those developing and exploiting qualifying patents. In brief, the new regime will enable companies generating Relevant Intellectual Property Profit (RIPP) from qualifying patents, to elect for tax to be charged on those profits at a reduced rate of 10%. [...]
The new Patent Box regime comes into effect - albeit with the full benefit phased in over five years - from April 2013. That might seem some way off now but there's a lot of things an efficient tax director can start doing now to get ready for the new regime. Like a growing number [...]
So, a recent report from RSM Tenon (as reported in Accountancy Age) suggests that "A third of small- and medium-sized enterprises could be failing to take advantage of tax breaks." That statistic almost certainly highlights a bigger problem, however. Although I have not seen the full report from RSM Tenon, I suspect that the 33% [...]
As an independent tax specialist, I do a fair bit of work consulting for firms of accountants and lawyers. The reason I have been able to develop this business is that these firms recognise that they don't have the level of expertise in my fields that I have - and it is not economical for [...]
The Government is currently consulting on the introduction of an Above The Line Credit for R&D. Overall, I firmly welcome these proposals as I believe the regime will make it much more cost-effective for businesses to carry out R&D in the UK. There is still a lot of work to be done before we have [...]