TAX POLICY ADMINISTRATION

The government has laid the Finance Act 2004 (Standard Lifetime Allowance) Regulations, SI 2019/29, increasing the pensions lifetime allowance in line with the consumer prices index to £1,055,000 for the tax year 2019/20, as announced at Budget 2018.

The CIOT’s Low Incomes Tax Reform Group (LITRG) has urged those affected by the loan charge to contact HMRC, rather than place too much reliance on the outcome of a government review in March 2019.

The government has published the draft Small Charitable Donations Act (Amendment) Order 2019, increasing from £20 to £30 the maximum limit for individual donations under the gift aid small donations scheme with effect from 6 April 2019, as announced at Budget 2018.

HMRC has advised it may not be able to meet its target response times for acknowledging disclosures made by taxpayers via the worldwide disclosure facility for UK tax liabilities relating to offshore matters, owing to ‘an increase in the number of disclosures received’.

HMRC is consulting until 11 February 2019 on the draft Income Tax (Construction Industry Scheme) (Amendment) and the Corporation Tax (Security for Payments) Regulations 2019, extending the scope of the existing security deposits legislation to include construction industry scheme and corporation

The chancellor has announced the appointment of Bill Dodwell to succeed Paul Morton as tax director of the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS).

HMRC has published the following:

Our pick of this week's cases   In R Dennis v HMRC [2018] UKFTT 735 (14 December 2018), the FTT found that a rebalancing payment made pursuant to a shareholders’ agreement was not made under a guarantee and therefore did not give rise to an...

In HMRC v Greenisland Football Club [2018] UKUT 440 (18 December 2018), the UT found that the FTT had been wrong to find that a clubhouse qualified as ‘village hall or similar building’ (VATA 1994 Sch 8 Group 5 item 2 note 6) but found that its...

In Supaglazing v HMRC [2018] UKFTT 712 (10 December 2018), the FTT found that discovery assessments issued by HMRC were valid as the taxpayer had been careless (FA 1998 Sch 18). Mrs Jones was the majority shareholder, company secretary and a director...