News and Comments

Rental Property Tax changes

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You’ll already be aware that mortgage interest relief is being progressively restricted to basic rate tax credits. This will only affect those that are higher or additional rate tax payers.
From April next year some other changes will be applied to some tax reliefs that might affect you in certain circumstances particularly if you are renting out a property that you have previously lived in.
The second major change is the inheriting of historical use. Where you used to be able to transfer to a spouse and start afresh perhaps benefiting from private residence relief, from April the historical use will passed on upon transfer which may restrict the private residence relief. Worth some consideration before the end of the tax year.

Help To Buy ISA

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The deadline for opening a help to buy ISA is 30th November. If you are between 16 and 39, don’t own your own home and haven’t yet opened one of these accounts, now is the time to do it.
You have up to 2030 to claim your bonus so don’t miss out. You only need £1 to open one of these accounts that you can claim up to £3,000 in government bonus for up to £12,000 saved.

ESSENTIAL TAX DATES FOR JUNE

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1 June
New Advisory Fuel Rates (AFR) for company car users apply from today.
7 June
VAT Return submissions for QE April 2017
19 June
PAYE, Student loan and CIS deductions are due for the month to 5 June 2017.
30 June
End of CT61 quarterly period.

Cash ISA Allowance

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Now we are in a new tax year you can now put up to £15,240 into a cash ISA for tax free savings income.
What typically happens is a mad panic at the end of the tax year to put funds in to use up the allowance but this tends to result in one being opened with whoever you bank with personally and these are often at the poorest rates of interest sometimes as low as 0.5% or 0.75%.
Shopping around you can achieve higher rates. This may come at the cost of tying up the funds for a number of years but not always. £15,000 at 0.75% would give you  a gross interest of £112.50 whilst at 2.5% that increases to £375.00.
You can of course open different types of ISAs but for cash ISAs you might want to do some simple research to get a better deal. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/best-cash-isa would be a good place to start.

Marriage Allowance

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Marriage Allowance lets you transfer £1,100 of your Personal Allowance to your husband, wife or civil partner.
This can reduce their tax by up to £220 every tax year (6 April to 5 April the next year).
To benefit as a couple, your partner will need to have unused personal allowances that can be transferred to you (or visa versa). We’ll check this with you before completing your 2015/16 self assessment return.

If you were eligible for Marriage Allowance in the 2015 to 2016 tax year, you can backdate your claim to 6 April 2015.

Individual Tax Accounts

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The intention is that all individual taxpayers will have access to an individual tax account by April 2016. This will contain details of relevant tax information already available to HMRC. Individual personal tax accounts are already available for many taxpayers, and contain payroll and pension information where relevant. Bank and building society interest are expected to be gradually made available from 2016. As more HMRC systems become aligned more tax information will be available on these accounts, and they will also be able to be used for other services, for example information regarding the state pension. Taxpayers who complete their returns on the HMRC online filing system will find this information already entered on their tax return pages.
Individuals will be able to access their tax account through their HMRC online self-assessment record, although an additional layer of verification will be needed. Those who do not have an online self-assessment record will be able to access the account directly through a new service ‘Gov.uk verify’. A note giving details of personal tax accounts is being included with employee Notices of Coding being sent out prior to the start of the 2016/17 tax year.
In due course it is expected that agents will be able to access clients’ tax accounts, and therefore we will be able to obtain details of information on the accounts directly, so that clients will not need to provide this information to us. However, this facility has not yet been fully developed and at present we will continue to ask clients to provide all tax return information to us directly.
 
 
 

Personal Tax Accounts

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HMRC previously announced that they intend to move to a ‘digital tax system’ over the next few years. There has been a lot of debate in the press about exactly what this will mean for taxpayers, although as yet there is limited practical detail of how the new system will work. This note explains what we know so far and how we expect the changes to affect our clients.
HMRC’s main proposals are set out in the ‘Making Tax Digital’ roadmap published in December 2015 following the original announcement in the March 2015 Budget. This document confirms that the intention of the digitalisation is to make tax administration “more effective, more efficient and easier for taxpayers”.
By 2020, HMRC intend to have moved to a fully digital tax system where:
 Form filling is eradicated – taxpayers should never have to tell HMRC information it already knows.
 Unnecessary time delays are eliminated – the tax system should operate on more of a ‘real-time’ basis, which should reduce errors and under-reporting.
 Taxpayers have access to digital tax accounts, with the information HMRC has automatically uploaded.
 

ESSENTIAL TAX DATES FOR APRIL

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5 April
Last day of 2015/16 tax year.
Deadline for 2015/16 ISA investments.
Last day to make disposals using the 2015/16 CGT exemption.
7 April
Due date for submission and payment of VAT for the quarter ended 29th February 2016.
14 April
Due date for income tax for the CT61 period to 31 March 2016.
19/22 April
Quarter 4 2015/16 PAYE remittance due.
30 April
Normal annual adjustment for VAT partial exemption calculations (monthly returns).

Budget 2016

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This Report, which was written immediately after the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his Budget Speech, is intended to provide an overview of the latest announcements and recent measures most…
Source: Budget 2016

Budget 2016

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The chancellor has announced that the Spring budget statement will be on Wednesday 16th March 2016.
Details will be posted here as it is published.