Frank Haskew, Head of the Tax Faculty, reports on recent developments at the Tax Faculty.
Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021
The Budget and Spending Review created much interest, and Tax Faculty staff produced various news items and quotes for the press on the day. Anita Monteith also appeared live on BBC Radio 4’s Money Box.
On 27-28 October, Tax Faculty staff participated in a number of calls with HM Treasury and HMRC personnel to discuss a wide variety of items included in the Budget announcements.
We published our usual detailed Budget summary on 2 November, which is available from our website and through links in our weekly TAXwire. My thanks go to Caroline Miskin and Lindsey Wicks for editing the material.
At the time of writing, we are expecting the publication of the draft Finance Bill 2021-22, which will include the residential property developer tax and an anti-money laundering levy. We will be making representations on the Finance Bill and would welcome any comments – please send them to Peter Bickley.
Engagement with Government
On 11 October, Tax Faculty Business Manager Richard Jones gave oral evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Finance Bill Sub-committee as part of its review into the draft 2021/22 Finance Bill measures.
The specific measures being considered by the committee were basis period reform and uncertain tax treatments.
We also participated in a meeting organised by the CIOT with Welsh Government Treasury officials concerning proposals to change the Welsh Taxes Act.
Making Tax Digital
With the government’s announcements on MTD, the Tax Faculty is finalising a plan for how best to help support our members in the run-up to its introduction in April 2024. We intend to deliver a monthly series of webinars through 2022, with the aim of providing support to members on different areas of the MTD programme – keep an eye on our website for further details.
We will continue to press the government to make changes to the underlying policy and remain of the opinion that, while we support the move to digital record-keeping, we remain opposed to proposals for quarterly reporting on the basis that it will be of little or no benefit to taxpayers or HMRC, but will be extremely costly and burdensome to the former.
Basis period reform
We were disappointed that, in spite of our recommendation that the basis period reform should be dropped, in the Budget the government nevertheless decided to proceed with it, albeit with a year’s delay as announced previously.
In a more welcome development, the government announced some changes to the transitional year rules, which will help mitigate some of the unwelcome impacts that arise from taxing more than one year’s profits in the same period. We will continue to press for these proposals to be reconsidered.
Consultations and representations
During the period we submitted representations on the draft legislation on the residential property developer tax and implementing the OECD’s reporting rule proposals for digital platforms. We continued to have extensive engagement with HMRC across a range of different areas of concern to members, with numerous meetings held that we do not have space to list here.
Committee meetings
During the period there were virtual meetings of the Tax Policy and Reputation Committee, the Private Client Committee, and an informal meeting of the Tax Faculty Board.
Webinars and other events
On 13 October, Anita Monteith and I participated in an ICAEW podcast on what we were expecting in the Budget. On 2 November, we presented our usual detailed webinar on the Autumn Budget. Many thanks to my fellow presenters Anita Monteith, Richard Jones and Caroline Miskin.
You can watch the webinar again by following the links on the ICAEW website.