HM Treasury and HMRC have set out new timelines for tax policy consultations and other work in the light of the current Covid-19 crisis. As I comment further below, this is welcome news but I would have gone much further… In summary: • There will be a three-month extension to many consultation deadlines to give stakeholders time to submit their views • The extension will…

This was the first Budget of the new government, the first Budget for 18 months, and the first Budget of the new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak. It followed a Bank of England interest base rate cut from 0.75% to 0.25% (50 basis points) announced earlier in the day. Whilst the first Budget of a new Parliament usually sets the tone for the next few years, often…

On 11 March, Sajid Javid will present his first Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer, which will also be the first Budget in nearly a year and a half. It’s also the first Budget presented by a government with a sizeable majority in Parliament for a decade or so. The first Budget of any new Parliament is normally the one where the Chancellor has the…

When I started my career in tax, we had Retirement Relief; very few people will remember it. Then we had Business Asset Taper Relief; some of you will remember that. Now we have Entrepreneurs’ Relief; but for how much longer? According to a recent article in The Times, this “loophole” (really? It is a Government incentive backed by comprehensive legislation) has “scandalised tax experts for…

What do politicians want to do with tax? They want to raise revenue to fund public spending and they want to use tax policy as a political carrot. Clearly the two completely contradict each other. Most people don’t like paying tax. It’s the nature of my work that a lot of people ask how they can “get round the system” or “isn’t there a way…

HMRC has recently published the 2019 edition of Measuring tax gaps which shows estimates of tax lost in 2017/18. Worryingly, the “gap” for 2018/18 is estimated at £35 bn, or 5.6% of total tax due. The 2017/17 figure was £33 bn (5.7%), so little progress has been made in reducing this. How does this fit, then, with our next PM’s wish to cut taxes? A…

Innovation – why we’re missing a trick for early-stage financing There’s a market failure in financing early-stage technology companies. Anyone who watches “Dragons’ Den” will know there’s a fine balance between risk and reward, but for early-stage technology companies, a number of factors combine to make this an extremely tough area. The thoughts and solution outlined below are the result of input from several authors…

Short and to the point. What else could the Chancellor do with so much political and structural uncertainty surrounding this statement? He said that the UK economy continues to grow, with wages increasing and unemployment at historic lows, providing a solid foundation on which to build Britain’s economic future. With borrowing and debt both forecast to be lower in every year than at last year’s…

Why do businesses create IP and what additional help do they need to encourage this? Incentives come in various forms, monetary or non-monetary, and they tend to be applied to induce product-orientated development ideas, which can be used in combinations of new and existing technologies and resources (Schumpeter,1934, writing in the Theory of Economic Development, published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA). But why are…

Lots of small changes. Many one-off giveaways. Lots of headline-grabbing announcements. Legislative tinkering. The Chancellor “Austerity is coming to an end but discipline will remain”. So, the Budget was earlier than we were expecting, to avoid clashing with the final stage of Brexit negotiations in November. Of course, this is the final Budget when the UK is part of the European Union, so how the…