Final issue of Faculty News

From 15 April, we will bring all our Tax Faculty content and news together in a single email to make it easier for you to stay up to date. Our TAXline articles will now be included in TAXwire, which is sent every Wednesday. You don’t need to take any action — this change will happen automatically.

As a result of this, this issue of Faculty News will be our final issue. We will update you on faculty activity, including engagement with HMRC, through our articles and in The Tax Track podcast.

Tax agent and advisers’ provisions in the Finance Act 2026

The Finance Act received Royal Assent on the 18 March 2026. At 543 pages, it is one of the longest in recent years and includes many important changes that will impact on tax agents and advisers, including the mandatory registration of tax adviser provisions, new rules on sanctionable conduct and further measures to tackle promoters. We remain concerned about a number of the measures in these provisions, in particular the agent registration and sanctionable conduct rules, and we will be working with HMRC and other professional bodies to ensure that these rules, and accompanying guidance, are implemented in a proportionate and targeted way and that they do not impose undue costs and burdens on tax advisers.

Further information

• TAXguide 05/25: Finance Act 2026
• Prepare for 2026/27: Tax advisers
• HMRC’s agent registration guidance lacks key details

Making Tax Digital

After first being announced as Making Tax Easier in 2015, MTD income tax officially starts in April 2026. It has been a long road to reach this point, and the faculty remains concerned about the potential burdens and costs caused by quarterly reporting and the general readiness of taxpayers, especially those who are unrepresented. As we move to implementation, we will continue to engage with HMRC as there are many practical issues that still need to be resolved. In addition, we will be interested to hear from members about how signing up clients is going and, when the time comes, how the quarterly submissions work out.

Further information

• Making Tax Digital
• ICAEW marks making tax digital’s 10th birthday

HMRC service standards

Poor HMRC service standards has been a consistent concern of members since Faculty News was first published so it is appropriate that it should feature in the final issue. The general consensus of feedback from members is that while there may be some improvements in telephone performance, post remains problematic and members now regularly report delays in dealing with post and tax repayments etc with quoted delays of up to a year. These service standards remain unacceptable and we continue to engage with HMRC on the need for major improvements. Later this year we are also planning to rerun our joint survey with CIOT which we undertook in 2024. Further details will be announced in due course. If you are interested in participating, please contact us.

The Charter Stakeholder Group has launched its annual survey to obtain feedback on HMRC's performance against the standards in the HMRC Charter. To learn more and to complete the survey, see our recent article.

Meetings with HMRC

In addition to the meetings with HMRC staff mentioned above in respect of the tax agent provisions, ICAEW Tax Faculty staff attended several other meetings with HMRC including: Wealthy External Forum; Expert Panel – Promoting Digital Channel Shift; and MTD External Readiness Forum.

Tax Faculty and other meetings

Meetings held during the month included the Tax Faculty Board, the regular monthly meeting of the Tax Policy & Reputation Committee and a meeting of the Practitioner Tax Committee.

Faculty webinars, events and podcasts

The 2026 MTDTalk series of webinars kicked off in March with a webinar on who is and is not within scope of MTD income tax. You can view the recording and sign up for future webinars here: MTDtalk 2026 webinar series.

March also saw our first Tax in Practice webinar for 2026, which focused on changes taking effect for 2026/27. This is available to view on demand.

In the latest episode of The Tax Track, the faculty’s Richard Jones and Stephen Relf are joined by Annis Lampad to discuss recent developments in the tax return compliance and enquiries space. It will be added to The Tax Track webpage shortly.

Media activity

Tax faculty staff/articles were quoted/referred to by:

• The Financial Times, in article about HMRC performance.
• The Times, in an article on business tax changes for 2026/27.
• The Express and the Birmingham Mail, in articles on Making Tax Digital for income tax.

In addition, Taxation published an article by Ed Saltmarsh on changes to the UK VAT import one stop shop scheme: Q&A: Changes to the UK VAT import one stop shop scheme (paywall).