In Alexander Beard v HMRC [2025] EWCA Civ 385, the Court of Appeal (CoA) found that distributions made by a company incorporated in Jersey and debited to its share premium account were subject to UK Income Tax, not Capital Gains Tax.
SME Tax News
In Afsha Chugtai v HMRC [2025] TC09495, the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) found that a transfer of value made over seven years before death could not be excluded from the estate for IHT purposes as the donor had reserved benefit in the assets gifted.
Parliament's Public Accounts Committee's (PAC) latest report, 'The cost of the tax system', again criticises HMRC's performance, warning that as tax collection costs rise, HMRC needs to put the customer first and be ready to adopt new technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The Government has published a response to its consultation, ‘Modernisation of the Stamp Taxes on Shares Framework’. Draft legislation for a new single tax on securities to replace Stamp Duty and Stamp Duty Reserve Tax (SDRT) will be published in due course. The new single tax and an online portal to handle reporting transactions should be in place by 2027.
HMRC have released the April 2025 edition of the Employment-Related Securities (ERS) Bulletin. It contains some useful information and provides a reminder about this year's filing deadline. Here is our enhanced version.
HMRC have announced a £1 billion tech procurement contract for "a strategic Core SaaS CRM Platform, along with core and additional supplementary products to meet the full range of eCRM capability". The contract comes after continued criticism of HMRC's systems from the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee.
Missed our SME Tax Updates in April? Here is a summary of the month.
Hello,
It is a bumper week for tax news. On Monday, HMRC published a ‘tax update’ for Spring 2025, making several important announcements, focusing on simplification, administration and reform. A number of consultations were also launched.
The Valuation Office Agency (VOA), the arm’s-length body responsible for valuing properties for council tax and business rates, is being scrapped. It will be brought into its parent department, HMRC, by April 2026 as part of the Government's drive "to slash red tape, increase oversight and ministerial accountability and rewire Whitehall to be more productive and agile".
On 28 April 2025, the Government made several tax policy announcements. These included a delay to the introduction of mandatory payrolling of Benefits In Kind until April 2027, simplifications to the VAT Capital Goods Scheme and revisions to the Check Employment Status for Tax (CEST) tool.
