Tax Faculty Board

At the Tax Faculty Board meeting on 20 June, we welcomed four new board members: Praveen Gupta; Chelsea Aldridge; Joe Brough; and Kara Williams. We also said farewell to two longstanding board members, Rob Barrigan and former Chair of the Faculty Raj Shah. We are very sorry to say goodbye to Rob and Raj and would like to thank them for their help and support on the board for so many years. 

Meeting with the chair of the Treasury Committee 

On 21 June, Tax Faculty representatives attended a dinner with the chair of the Treasury Committee, Harriett Baldwin MP. The dinner provided an opportunity for Ms Baldwin to talk about the work of the Treasury Committee and seek feedback on the operation and administration of the UK tax system directly from members of the tax profession.

E-commerce trade commission

The Tax Faculty’s VAT and Duties manager Ed Saltmarsh participated in the inaugural board meeting of the E-Commerce Trade Commission – an initiative founded by The Institute of Export and International Trade to support small British businesses to start or grow their export business. The meeting was followed by the launch event, which was supported by the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Kemi Badenoch MP, and the Minister for Exports, Lord Offord of Garvel.

Making Tax Digital

ICAEW submitted evidence to the Public Accounts Committee inquiry: Progress with making tax digital. The evidence was largely along the lines of ICAEW’s recent letter to HMRC. The inquiry has been prompted by a National Audit Office (NAO) investigation into making tax digital to which the Tax Faculty provided evidence. The NAO report was published on 12 June 2023 and HMRC provided oral evidence to the Public Accounts Committee on 19 June.

Consultation work 

As noted in the representations section below, it was a bumper month for responding to consultations with topics ranging from commenting on tougher consequences for promoters of tax avoidance schemes through to welcome proposals for PAYE offsets in cases of IR35 non-compliance.

We participated in a meeting of HMRC’s Representative Bodies Steering Group. The topics discussed included:

• HMRC service performance which continues to be a major concern, especially as HMRC will have reduced funding available in 2023/24. HMRC also announced the very disappointing closure of the self assessment helpline until September. 
• Making Tax Digital ITSA – HMRC provided an update on the continuing review for small businesses, with recommendations expected to be made to the government shortly and an announcement expected in the autumn. 
• HMRC’s planned move at the end of June of one of its largest computer systems, the National insurance and PAYE service, to the cloud. 

We also had a regular quarterly catch-up call with HMRC’s intermediaries team. This included discussions on regulation and raising standards generally, HMRC’s service standards, areas where HMRC’s agent services can be improved and proposals for transforming the agent authorisation process.

We made informal written representations on a range of employment tax and NIC matters including further correspondence with HMRC (see our letter dated 1 March published as ICAEW REP 21/23) on differences between HMRC’s employer liabilities and payments accounts and employers’ records.

Tax Faculty committee meetings 

During the month there were meetings of the Tax Faculty Board, the Compliance and Investigations Committee, the Tax Policy and Reputation Committee, the Practitioner Tax Committee, and the Private Client Committee.

Representations published

We submitted 10 representations in the month, as follows: 

ICAEW REP 47/23 VAT energy saving materials relief

ICAEW REP 50/23 Expanding the cash basis

ICAEW REP 53/23 Simplifying and modernising HMRC’s income tax services through the tax administration framework

ICAEW REP 54/23 Public Accounts Committee – progress with Making Tax Digital

ICAEW REP 55/23 Taxation of environmental land management and ecosystem service markets

ICAEW REP 56/23 Off-payroll working (IR35): calculation of PAYE liability in cases of non-compliance

ICAEW REP 57/23 Addressing carbon leakage risk to support decarbonisation

ICAEW REP 58/23 Tougher consequences for the promoters of tax avoidance

ICAEW REP 60/23 The taxation of decentralised finance (DeFi) involving the lending and staking of cryptoassets

ICAEW REP 61/23 Stamp taxes on shares modernisation

Webinars and other events 

On 20 June the Tax Faculty and the Portfolio Careers Community held a webinar on IR35 and employment status: where are we now? Our thanks are due to our expert speaker Richard Maitland, Partner and specialist in employment tax at MHA, and to Tax Faculty Technical Manager Peter Bickley for moderating.

Staff news

Anita Monteith retired at the end of June. Anita has been involved with the Tax Faculty since it was first established in 1991. She joined the Tax Faculty Committee at inception and in 1997 became Chair of the Faculty. In 2003, Anita joined the Tax Faculty staff and has been an exceptional member of the team ever since. We will miss her expertise, professionalism and wise counsel – her energy and dedication were truly exceptional. We will also miss a much-loved friend and colleague and we wish her all the best for the future.

With Anita’s retirement, we are pleased to announce that Lindsey Wicks and Richard Jones have been promoted to Senior Technical Managers. Lindsey has been an outstanding editor for the Tax Faculty since she joined in 2019 and, following her well-deserved promotion, will start to assume a wider policy role while we look to strengthen our editorial team with a further appointment. Richard has been a key member of the Tax Faculty team since he joined in 2020 and will now take the lead responsibility for our business tax policy work, supporting the key role that chartered accountants perform in advising businesses. Congratulations to both Lindsey and Richard.