HMRC

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, part of The Treasury, has issued a reminder (reproduced below) to all businesses with an annual turnover of more than GBP85,000 that new reporting rules require steps to be taken on or before 29 July this year.

When the USA passes laws relating to offshore income and assets, it's big news and around the world US citizens and those providing services to them get into something of a flap. But when the UK introduced, in November last year, a requirement for "anyone who has undeclared UK tax liabilities that involved offshore matters or transfers to disclose the relevant information about this non-compliance" there was barely a ripple. There should have been a storm because penalties are potentially devastating.

This weekend has been an interesting weekend for spam, not the least of which is because such a large amount got through our first line filters: far more than usual. But they were all stopped at the second line of defence and as we trawled through the blocked messages, we came across several that were worthy of comment. One is that old chestnut, the United Nations scam; another is the latest example from a spam-house that now allows us to identify their server farm and it is particularly interesting because it appears to promote a scheme that fell under the bus when the British tax authorities began action in relation to that scheme. And then there's the special mention of the persistent finditeasy.info which is just the most blatant spam-scam that it's hard to understand how they think it will pass any filter. And there's more....

In recent weeks, largely because members of the media are concerned so the whole industry is in a bit of a tizz, there has been much made of the BBC's policy of requiring some people working there to work on contract, where the contract is between the BBC and a company owned and controlled by the contractor. There are perfectly good reasons why employers want such an arrangement but Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs have taken the view that this is a scheme designed to reduce personal income tax, especially where the contractor operated through an offshore company (often not in his or her own name). Now the whole situation has become even more confused as HMRC has lost a case that seemed like a sure-fire win.