Avoidance & evasion

The government has promised to add “strong safeguards” and extra checks to new powers that will allow HMRC to access taxpayers’ bank accounts to retrieve unpaid tax, following concerns that innocent individuals will be targeted inadvertently – but critics say the measures do not go far enough and insist a right to appeal against the Revenue’s actions must be guaranteed.
Financial Times; Telegraph

Many reports fail to point out that much of the tax debt is not ultimately due: it has arisen because returns have not gone in and estimated assessments have been raised. That is a reasonable way to get the taxpayer’s attention, but it does not mean HMRC should be able to take the money from his bank account.

Switzerland, the world's largest offshore financial centre, has agreed to automatically hand over details of foreigners’ bank accounts to other countries, under a new information exchange accord signed by the UK and 48 other countries at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It  aimed at ending global tax evasion and will require participating governments to swap tax data in 2017 with respect to details collected from 31 December 2015.
Financial Times; Financial Times

Automatic information exchange is seen as the gold standard for transparency. There will always be states that either do not sign up or pay lip service to the concept – but would tax evaders want to stash ill-gotten fortunes in such dodgy places?

Business

The UK is failing to produce enough globally successful entrepreneurs because of the burden of high taxes, according to the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank, has recommended that the government cut capital gains tax and scrap the 45p rate of income tax for the country to compete with the US, Ireland, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong in producing billionaire entrepreneurs.
Telegraph

Given the wealth (pun intended) of evidence that the overwhelming benefit of growth in incomes in recent years has gone to the very rich, the need to cut their taxes still further is far from obvious. A successful entrepreneur pays mainly capital gains tax; even at 28% it is less than the income tax and National Insurance paid by a basic-rate taxpayer. The economist getting all the headlines at present, Thomas Piketty, would argue that the wealthy’s taxes ought to be increased.

Inheritance tax

Families have more time to file changes to inheritance tax (IHT) returns, under new rules that allow alterations of up to 18 months after the date of the taxpayer's death – although the window does not prevent interest being charged on unpaid tax that should have been settled when the original IHT return was submitted.
Times

Expect there to be complaints from those who do not realise the extended deadline does not stop interest running.

Residence

Income taxes paid by foreigners living in the UK rose by a fifth to a record £6.8bn in the three years to 2011/12, official data shows. Law firm Pinsent Masons believes the figures show the appeal of the country’s tax rules to mobile workers and belie the image of non-domiciled individuals as a “group of plurocrats who add little to the… economy”.
Financial Times

The news belies the repeated claims from the same firm that introducing  and then increasing the levy on the non-domiciled would drive them all away.

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