On 13 July, we held the latest Wyman Symposium on whether the 5 April tax year end should be changed to either 31 March or 31 December. We had four excellent speakers. Between them, they covered a range of different perspectives:

• Norah Collender of Chartered Accountants Ireland shared her experience of Ireland’s transition from a 5 April tax year end to 31 December.
• Martin Wheatcroft of Pendan looked at the potential impact on the UK’s public finances, concluding that a 31 December date might remove some estimation in the system.
• Jill Springbett, a partner at MGR Weston Kay and chair of the Tax Faculty Practitioner Tax Committee, argued that while a 31 December date would greatly assist clients with international interests, moving to a 31 March date would be less disruptive.
• Steve Wade, an associate partner at EY and chair of the Tax Faculty Employment Taxes and NIC Committee, reflected on his experiences with real-time information reporting for payroll, and argued that the government should seize the opportunity to get things right and adopt a 31 December date.

Our thanks go to the speakers, to the chair of the event, Raj Shah, and to Anita Monteith for organising it. At the start, 49% of attendees were in favour of moving to a 31 December date, but by the end, this had increased to 78%. It remains to be seen whether the government will bite that particular bullet!

On 20 July 2021, Anita Monteith represented ICAEW’s Tax Faculty at the All-Party Parliamentary Group meeting, at which the speaker was Rt Hon Jesse Norman MP, Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The Seventh Independent Report of the Tax Professionals Forum was published on 16 July 2021, accompanied by a response from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Anita Monteith is a member of the group, as is Tax Faculty committee member Chris Sanger of EY.

On 20 July 2021, the government published details and draft legislation for a number of measures that it is proposed will be included in the 2022 Finance Act. Measures announced include further steps to clamp down on the promoters of tax avoidance schemes, powers to tackle electronic sales suppression and the latest iteration of a proposal for large companies to notify HMRC of uncertain tax treatments. If you have any comments on these and any other measures, please send them to peter.bickley@icaew.com

We attended several meetings with HMRC and other professional bodies on the proposals for Making Tax Digital for income tax. HMRC confirmed that it is pressing ahead with the proposed start date of 6 April 2023, which now leaves members and their clients with very little time to prepare for the changes. On 20 July 2021, as part of this project, HMRC launched a consultation on proposals to change the existing rules on basis periods. The consultation deadline was only six weeks, so by the time this news report appears, we will have submitted ICAEW’s response.

We submitted our responses to the tax administration framework review (TAFR) and the proposal for more timely payment of income tax. In relation to TAFR, Tax Faculty staff and several of our active members attended a round-table event with HMRC to discuss the key priorities for ICAEW: a single identifier for individual taxpayers, a single system for registration, authentication and authorisation of agents, and to be able to establish income tax, national insurance contributions and capital gains tax liabilities in a single system.

To host the material on an ongoing basis and to break down ICAEW’s response to the call for evidence into key themes, we have created a special page on ICAEW's website Building a better tax system for the UK

During the period, there were virtual meetings of the VAT & Duties Committee, the Technical and Oversight Committee and the SME Business Tax Committee.

On 20 July, Caroline Miskin presented our latest webinar on the fifth grant under the SEISS scheme. In addition, Richard Jones presented at two ICAEW District Society webinars, where he spoke on the Teesside and Plymouth freeports.