The new Business Support service continues to offer tax payers deferred terms for settlement of their tax liabilities. Nationally the feedback from businesses and individuals who have made applications has been promising – HMRC have been sympathetic and supportive in most cases.

However there is a circumstance where the Support Service staff have been unable to assist and that is when businesses are making losses in the current tax year.

Under recent concessions from HMRC it is now possible to carry back some tax losses for 3 years. Of course it is not possible to quantify the tax effects of these losses until accounts are finally submitted with the relevant claims.

The Budget announcement last week now includes powers that will allow the Business Payment Support Service to take these losses into account when negotiating deferred payment arrangements.

We recommend that you call us if you need to quantify the effects of possible loss relief in the current year, and carry backs to previous years.

Some tax saving tips for parents

• From 6 April 2009 expectant mothers can claim a lump sum of £190 in the 25th week of pregnancy. Claim forms are only available from the midwife or doctor. The midwife or doctor will need to complete their parts of the form and sign and date it before giving it out.
• Up to £55 per week can be paid to employees in the form of Childcare Vouchers. Save tax and NI, and no cost to the employer (depending on provider chosen).
• From 6th April the standard rate of maternity/paternity pay increased to £123.06 per week.
• Make sure you claim for tax credits if appropriate. There is a calculator on the HMRC website . Make sure you keep HMRC up to date with any changes in circumstances eg new child.

New tax rates – you have choices!

We all know the story. Banks not properly regulated by the Government, and bailed out to the tune of billions and billions of pounds. The figure given in the budget was £175 billion deficit up from an expected £38 billion expected deficit just one year ago. I think most people agree the increased figure is also going to be an under-estimate. Now we have to pay for it.

From 6th April 2010 personal allowances are gradually withdrawn for those earning over £100,000. For every £2 of income earned above £100,000 personal allowances will be reduced by £1. This makes the effective rate of tax for those with earnings over £100,000 of 60%. There is national insurance of 1% also, so the true rate is 61%.

The rate will go back to 40% (really41%) for earningas over £112,500.

Then from £150,000 the new rate of 50% plus 1%NI ie 51%will apply.

If you dont like the idea of paying 40%, 51% or even 61% tax rates, you do have choices.

Perhaps one of the most straightforward options is to organise your affairs so that some or all of your income goes into a limited company. A company will pay 21% tax on profits up to £300,000. Clearly a big saving on 61%.

There is much more detail to discuss than we would wish to include here and indeed other tax planning options. Please contact us to discuss the details.

HM Revenue & Customs have announced they will spend £1 billion on enforcement and compliance this year, in the hope that they will cut tax avoidance and evasion by £2.4 billion.see Times article

That is a huge quarter of its £4 billion budget to be spent on catching tax-dodgers. The clampdown comes after a  “litigation and settlement review” the Revenue promised to take more people to court to recover tax instead of cutting deals in out-of-court settlements. Beware the cost of   defending yourself or your company in court if the need arises can be frighteningly expensive. That is why we recommend all clients take up our professional fees insurance. This enables your fees to be paid in the event of HMRC enquiry.

Lesley Strathie, who took over as the HMRC’s chief executive and permanent secretary five months ago, said that the organisation would relentlessly pursue those who bent or broke the rules.

Last month on the ITV Tonight programme an HMRC employee claimed that HMRC staff routinely bin letters and ignore tax errors in order to meet performance targets.

He said “Staff have actually been told that when someone rings in with a tax enquiry and you spot a mistake on a person’s record, you have to ignore itunless they have actually asked you to look at the mistake. Its all about the Government target of answering so many calls a day. And if you write in, the post often goes missing. It just disappears, just gets binned, some letters simply aren’t seen by anyone.”

HMRC’s official comment was that anyone found to be binning correpondence would be subject to disciplinary action.

In the current harsh economic climate, many companies are making losses.

It is very common to find small companies paying modest salaries to the director / owners and also paying dividends, this is the most tax efficient way to extract profits from the company.

If the company is making losses then be aware that paying dividends could be dangerous! Dividends need to be paid from available profits – this could be profit earned this year or profits earned in earlier years but retained in the company rather than paid out as dividends.

Pay a dividend when there are no available profits and this is ‘ultra vires’ or invalid, this can have the following nasty consequences:

Firstly, the shareholders can be required to repay the invalid dividend to the company. This can happen after the company has gone into liquidation, and can be a very unexpected and financially painful experience.

Secondly, the Inland Revenue will treat the invalid dividend as a loan to a participator. Where such a loan is outstanding more than 9 months after the end of an accounting period, there is a tax charge of 25% on the value of the loan. This is commonly known as S419 tax (S419 ICTA 1988 is the legislation). There is also a tax charge on the benefit of an interest free loan (unless the amount of the loan is below £5,000)

UK tax legislation relating to capital gains tax (CGT) and inheritance tax (IHT) is designed to  favour of marriage or Civil Partnership. The recent Budget has done nothing to change this.

Be aware that the phrase ‘common law wife or husband’ is misleading, if one partner dies without a will, the other will have no rights to the estate.

If you are committed to a long term life partnership with another individual, and you are not married or in Civil Partnership, the opportunities to mitigate CGT and or IHT are limited. This article discusses these limited options.

• Assets owned when relationship started. Generally speaking it has been difficult to transfer assets between partners that were owned prior to the commencement of their relationship. For IHT purposes the transfer would be treated as a Potentially Exempt Transfer (PET) – any potential liability would only disappear after a seven year period. The IHT risk could be insured against by taking out a seven year life policy, but of course you would have to pay the premiums!

If assets are transferred between partners, and the asset in question is subject to CGT on disposal, any such transfer will create a CGT liability. The only exception is if the market value of the assets at the date of the gift or transfer is the same as, or lower than the original cost. With most share portfolios now in a loss position this may open up opportunities to equalise estates by gifting across securities. This may also crystallise CGT losses for the donor which he or she could put to good use.

Depending on the type of asset, transfers may trigger Stamp Duty Land Tax charges.

And finally, gains on gifts of certain business assets can be rolled over.

• Assets purchased after the relationship started.  Assets purchased together after the relationship has commenced opens up the possibility of equalising estates by owning such assets jointly.

If there are concerns about unequal financial contributions made by partners to purchase the asset, these can be reflected in the percentage share.

In certain circumstances it may also be effective to use a trust to accommodate certain aspects of the transaction.

• Insurance. If IHT planning is ignored a partner surviving a first death may be obliged to sell assets, if the couple’s assets were significantly above their nil rate bands. (Currently £325,000)

This may involve the survivor selling the family home, or taking out a mortgage, to pay IHT.

This risk can be covered by a first death life policy written in trust for the benefit of the survivor.

Conclusion

Most unmarried couples are disadvantaged in the UK tax system. Ultimately the only way to redress this is for our Government to legislate and remove this bias, or for affected couples to actually get married or enter into a Civil Partnership. Obviously there are many important non-tax reasons why this may be an inappropriate course of action to take.

The EU seems to have caused a problem for the Chancellor. As a direct result of EU rulings the UK has been compelled to extend the various tax advantages of ‘Furnished Holiday Lettings’ status to properties located within the European Economic Area (EEA) – as long as they meet the required qualifying criteria.

Clearly the UK Treasury were very unhappy with this, and in his April 2009 budget the Chancellor announced that the entire Furnished Holiday Lettings tax legislation is to be repealed and withdrawn with effect from 6 April 2010.

What difference will this make?

Obviously if you presently rent out accommodation as a qualifying holiday let in the UK it will make a big difference.

From the 6 April 2010 FHL property income will revert to being taxed as non-FHL property income. In a nut shell the downside tax effects after 5 April 2010 are:

• you can no longer set of FHL losses against other income

• you can no longer claim capital allowances for the purchases of furniture and equipment, and

• you will lose significant capital gains tax reliefs including roll-over and entrepreneurs’ relief if you dispose of FHL properties after 5 April 2010.

• you will lose the ‘Business Property Relief’ on FHL property, which means the property value will become chargeable to inheritance tax.
  

What are the opportunities?

As always change can have positive effects. We have listed a two below:

• if you own a let property in the EEA, that would have qualified as a FHL property under the present rules, it may be possible to back date changes to your tax returns for 2007 and 2008. This would include set off of surplus FHL losses against other income.

• if you have sold a property in the EEA that would have qualified for more favourable capital gains tax treatment, computations can be revised for the years ending 5 April 2007 and 5 April 2008.

What’s next?

If you feel that you may be affected by these changes we should meet and discuss as soon as possible. The most immediate deadline is to apply for a late change to your 2007 self assessment tax return if it needs to be changed; this has to be done by 31 July 2009. (If you have operated your FHL trade through a company, amendments to tax computations for accounting periods ending after 31 December 2006 have to be submitted by the same date, 31 July 2009.)

HMRC have now agreed that all medical check-ups provided by employers to an individual employee will be treated as tax and NIC free, even if the check-ups are not available to all employees.

This clarifies a number of changes in their approach, and informal concessions, in the last few years. The change will be acknowledged in the forthcoming Finance Bill 2009.

From 6 April 2009 there is a change in the penalty you will pay if you are late notifying HMRC that you have commenced self-employment.

Up to 6 April 2009 the penalty was £100 and you had 3 months after commencement of trade to let HMRC know.

From 6 April 2009 the rules are changed as follows:

1. Anyone who ceases or becomes liable for Class 2 or Class 3 contributions must notify HMRC immediately.
2. A penalty may be levied (between 30% and 100% of the “lost contributions”) if notice is not given by 31 January following the end of the tax year in which you become liable.
3. There will be no penalty if you have a reasonable excuse for the late notification.

If your local tax office sent you a demand to pay tax you would obviously take some interest in the issue – is this change correct? When do I have to pay it?

Would you feel the same if you received a notification of change to your PAYE code number?

Your tax code is set at the level at which you pay no tax. If your tax code is 600L, you can earn up to £6,000 a year (£500 per month) tax free. If towards the end of a tax year this reduces to say 400L, your annual tax free allowance will have dropped to £4,000. Depending on the degree of reduction and the timing of the adjustment, you may suffer an immediate and perhaps significant drop in your take home pay.

What to do?

Your tax code can be revised in a downwards direction for a number of reasons. Some of the more frequent causes are set out below:

*  State Pensions – your State Pension is paid to you with no deduction for tax. Unfortunately the pension is treated as income for tax purposes and if you are employed and in receipt of the pension, HMRC will seek to collect any tax due by reducing your tax code.
* Benefits in kind – if your employer provides any form of taxable benefit, company car, health insurance etc.
* Unpaid tax from previous tax years.

An interesting situation arises if the total reduction in a tax year exceeds your basic tax free allowance. For instance if at the beginning of a tax year your tax free allowance was set at £6,500, but your untaxed State Pension for the forthcoming year was £10,000, this would result in a negative code of -350. (£6,500 – £10,000). On your Notice of Coding this would be displayed as K350. A K code means that you have no allowances to set off against your salary before tax is calculated – in fact, in the example set out above, £3,500 will be added to your taxable earnings! An increase in a K code will increase your tax deductions and reduce your take home pay.

If you receive a notification that your tax code has changed do check it out, H M Revenue & Customs have been known to make mistakes!