Quick news from HMRC: a summary of news for the last two weeks.

Student loan borrowers; repaying your loan through SA

HMRC has new guidance to support the information in the SA100 tax return notes for agents completing returns with or for clients who are repaying a student loan.

CIS repayments

HMRC has updated the leaflet that sets out how subcontractors that are limited companies should reclaim any deductions they have had taken from their payments under the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS). HMRC will send a copy of the leaflet to the limited company subcontractors they contact about claims for repayment of deductions through the P35 process. See Limited Company Subcontractors claiming back CIS deductions (PDF 34K)

Statutory Residence 

HMRC has published a Tax Residence Indicator to help people determine their residence status for tax purposes. It is a pilot version so has limited access.

Action for UK residents with accounts or investments in Switzerland

A key date in the UK and Swiss Tax Agreement has just passed. 31 May 2013 was the deadline for UK residents with accounts or investments in Switzerland to tell their bank whether they will be choosing to pay a one-off levy to settle past UK tax liabilities or allow details of the previous activity on their accounts to be passed to HMRC. If taxpayers did not inform their bank of their decision then the one-off levy will automatically apply.

Block on capital allowance claims

The Government has announced that it will introduce provisions in Finance Bill 2013 to stop claims by the large gas and electricity companies in respect of contributions made by users of energy towards the costs of upgrades to their systems. The Government published draft legislation, an explanatory note and a Tax Information and Impact Notice.

It says that its new measures:

“puts beyond any doubt that a business cannot claim capital allowances on capital expenditure on plant or machinery which is covered by a contribution from another business. This stops potential claims for substantial sums of historic expenditure for which businesses receiving contributions have not borne the economic cost and did not expect to obtain allowances. Also it prevents any double allowances for the same expenditure.”