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It's official
HMRC published their final Tax Bulletin, issue 86, in December 2006. In this they announced that from 1 January 2007 Tax Bulletins and Business Briefs will both be replaced by a unified online-only free publication: HMRC Brief. This will be issued as and when the department has news to give.
HMRC Briefs are in the library section of the website and former direct taxes users will, in the near future, be able to sign up to an RSS feed to be alerted when a new items come up. The existing e-mail alert system for indirect taxes will continue.
Savings Directive
On 1 January 2007, Bulgaria and Romania became Member States of the EU. The Bulletin contains a note explaining how this will affect persons in the UK who have to report certain payments of interest under the UK regulations that implement the European Savings Directive. These regulations automatically apply to paying agents making payments of savings income to individual customers (beneficial owners) in those countries from 1 January in the same way as they apply in relation to payments to individual customers who live in other Member States.
The effect is that paying/receiving agents will have to report payments of savings income which they make to residents of those countries on or after 1 January. Information and links to the guidance can be found at www.hmrc.gov.uk/esd-guidance.
Dundee SCEC
The Dundee Small Company Enterprise Centre closed at the beginning of November. It handled the tax affairs of all companies using the venture capital schemes (enterprise investment schemes, venture capital trusts and corporate venturing schemes) or enterprise management incentive initiatives in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Manchester and Sheffield plus a proportion of such companies in the London area.
Cases are now dealt with by the other two centres in Cardiff and Maidstone. Broadly, most cases which were dealt with by Dundee will be transferred to Cardiff, except where the company (or at least its registered office) is located in the Sheffield, Manchester or south London areas. Those cases are being transferred to Maidstone.
Dundee also dealt with the tax affairs of about half of the venture capital trusts. These are all being transferred to Cardiff, which already deals with the other half.
Readers are referred to the Bulletin for other articles, many of which have already been published and covered in Update.
Interventions
HMRC's new interventions pilots came to an end at around the end of October 2006, and HMRC have recently advised that they do not plan further trials of new interventions until they have evaluated the information from the pilots. The Tax Faculty's January 2007 issue of TAXline states that HMRC are first looking at how their compliance processes can be modernised and have invited the tax profession to be fully involved in this developing work. They are looking in particular at:
- How to help very new businesses be compliant.
- Better communication with HMRC: more effective use of the telephone and starting to use email.
- How to share risk assessment processes, as used by both HMRC and agents.
- How HMRC can rely more on the quality assurance procedures of professional bodies.
- How to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of TMA 1970, s 9A enquiries.
- How to address taxpayer and agent concerns over safeguards for taxpayers in any new compliance methods.
At the time of writing his article, 'Power is my mistress', Taxation, 4 January 2007, page 1, Robert Maas understood that HMRC intended to proceed with the second pilot without reviewing the outcome of phase 1. In the light of HMRC's holding back, Robert hopes that HMRC really are 'open to alternative ideas from the profession and that the eventual fruits of the consultation do not simply follow HMRC's current interventions', but he is sceptical that this is the case.
