ICAEW.com works better with JavaScript enabled.

Insights

Pulling together opinion, analysis, interviews and features on the profession along with a focus on the key issues affecting accountancy and the world of business.

Contents
Back to top
Philippa Lamb speaking on the microphone
Behind the Numbers

Best of 2025

  • Podcast
  • ICAEW Insights
With Christmas round the corner, we’ve put together a special best of episode of Behind the Numbers, featuring some of the most memorable conversations from throughout the year.
Listen now

Latest news

Public finances on track to reach OBR’s revised full year forecast
  • Article
  • 19 Dec 2025
The public finance budget overrun was £16bn in the eight months to November 2025 and is expected to reach £20bn by the end of March 2026.
How to shift from Power Query to Power BI
  • Article
  • 19 Dec 2025
Getting started with Power BI doesn’t have to be daunting. Here’s how you can make the transition.
How the UK government plans to tackle corruption
  • Article
  • 19 Dec 2025
ICAEW welcomes the government’s new Anti-Corruption Strategy for its ambition to strengthen the UK’s resilience to illicit finance, but identifies three key areas where it must go further.

Latest tax news

New guidance on VAT treatment of supplies of medical staff
  • Article
  • 19 Dec 2025
HMRC has updated its position on the VAT treatment of the supply of temporary medical staff (locum doctors), and explained how businesses can claim a refund of overpaid VAT, in Revenue and Customs Brief 9 (2025).
Agents may be overlooking IHT on cryptoassets
  • Article
  • 19 Dec 2025
HMRC is writing to agents who have previously submitted inheritance tax (IHT) returns to raise awareness of the requirement to account for IHT on cryptoassets. Any returns that contain an error should be corrected.
Taxpayers told to watch out for self assessment scams
  • Article
  • 18 Dec 2025
In a warning to taxpayers, HMRC has revealed that more than 4,800 self assessment scams have been reported since February 2025. Separately, HMRC has launched a new tool for reporting suspicious activity in HMRC online accounts.

Insights specials

A listing of one-off Insights specials that focus on a particular subject, interviewing the key people, identifying developing trends and examining the underlying issues.

How to fix VAT
  • Hub page
ICAEW explores the challenges and opportunities offered in reimagining VAT and it's application. Read about the history of VAT, the lessons that can be learned from outside the UK and the potential of digitalisation.
Global Ethics Day
  • Hub page
ICAEW celebrates Global Ethics Day each year. The 2025 theme is "Ethics Re-envisioned,” challenging us to think boldly about how we embed ethical principles into the heart of our organisations.
Local government finance: skills for the future
  • Hub page
Improving financial skills at local authorities is critical in balancing the books and delivering value for citizens. As backstop dates for audited accounts come into force, ICAEW explores how local authorities can strengthen their approach to financial management.

Accounting Intelligence

ICAEW has created a range of resources to support members in business and practice build their understanding of AI. There are video masterclasses, as well as features discussing opportunities, challenges, limitations, risk management and ethics.

Browse resources Watch AI masterclasses
Computer screen with text relating to generative AI

Videos

AI masterclass Konrad Bukowski-Kruszyna ACA, Head of Audit Data Analytics, RSM UK outlines how generative AI can help ensure that audit sampling is being handled correctly.
AI masterclass on better audit sampling
  • Video
  • 29 Oct 2024
Konrad Bukowski-Kruszyna ACA, Head of Audit Data Analytics, RSM UK outlines how generative AI can help ensure that audit sampling is being handled correctly.
Busy road in London
What is VAT?
  • Video
  • 19 Nov 2024
Value added tax is a vital tool for raising revenue to fund education, healthcare and more. We explain how it works and how it could be improved.
AI masterclass Jenny Blewett FCA, Head of Finance at Costello Medical talks about how she used generative AI to help check her firm’s banking controls when she was new in post
AI masterclass on reviewing company controls
  • Video
  • 30 Oct 2024
Jenny Blewett FCA, Head of Finance at Costello Medical talks about how she used generative AI to help check her firm's banking controls when she was new in post
Video thumbnail - bird's view of a city
Private equity: is it here to stay?
  • Video
  • 22 May 2024
Matt Meadows, Managing Partner, Moore Kingston Smith, and Caroline Monk, Executive Partner, Beever and Struthers, on their views of private equity on the accountancy sector.

The opinions expressed by external guest speakers in interviews or other publications included on this website are, by their nature, those of the speaker. They are not necessarily fully endorsed by the ICAEW or purport to reflect the official policies and views of the ICAEW or its members.

Podcast episodes

Best of 2025
  • Podcast
  • 18 Dec 2025
With Christmas round the corner, we’ve put together a special best of episode of Behind the Numbers, featuring some of the most memorable conversations from throughout the year.
Budget 25: where’s the growth?
  • Podcast
  • 01 Dec 2025
This episode is all about the Budget. What was in it? What are the implications? Was there anything positive to glean from it?
Budget 25: Do the tax changes meet the tenets?
  • Podcast
  • 01 Dec 2025
In this episode, we rate the Budget against ICAEW’s ten tenets for a better tax system, focusing on the government’s decision to freeze the personal allowance and tax thresholds for an additional three years, the new tax on electric vehicles and changes to the NIC treatment of salary sacrificed pension contributions.

Charts of the week

A selection of graphical charts
Chart of the week: Inflation
  • Article
  • 19 Dec 2025
The Bank of England’s Christmas present to the nation of a cut in interest rates prompts our chart of the week to take a look at what is going under the hood of inflation.
A selection of graphical charts
Chart of the week: Net migration
  • Article
  • 12 Dec 2025
Our chart this week illustrates the fall, rise and fall again of net inward migration over the past eight years and asks whether it will bounce back to hit the OBR’s long-term assumption by the end of the decade.
A selection of graphical charts
Chart of the week: Budget 2025 debt blues
  • Article
  • 05 Dec 2025
Our chart this week illustrates how despite being a “tax-raising Budget”, the cumulative net effect of all the changes announced last week is to add £61bn to the public sector net debt forecast for 31 March 2030.

Insights by topic

Student Insights Interviews, guides and features giving you fresh insights, innovative ideas and an inside look at the lives and careers of ICAEW students and members. No matter what stage you’re at in your journey with us, you’ll find content to suit you.
Insights index
  • Listing
This page provides an entry point to the articles that have formed the daily, monthly and weekly member emails, arranged by section and month. It also contains an index of themed Insights specials and the Quarterly magazine.
Climate hub
  • Hub page
Climate change is a crucial issue for the accounting profession. Are you professionally ready to mitigate the risk and maximise the opportunity of climate change? Find inspiration, information and practical resources to support the goals set out in the Paris Agreement and in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Diversity and Inclusion
  • Hub page
ICAEW is committed to Diversity and Inclusion. In this hub we bring together timely D&I resources on the protected characteristics of the Equality Act, along with our latest insights into diversity in the profession.
EU and international trade
  • Hub page
A range of resources on the implications of the UK leaving the EU on 31 December 2020.
Regulatory News
  • Listing
A round-up of regulatory and conduct updates and communications from the ICAEW Professional Standards Department.
Sponsored content
  • Listing
Hear what our partners are saying on topical issues impacting the accountancy profession.