You own and let several holiday lodges but you are now approaching retirement and are planning to sell off the properties in the next few years. Could coronavirus cause a nasty tax trap for you and how can you avoid this? Stuart Hair takes a closer look. If your properties qualify as furnished holiday lettings...

Because of the pandemic, you have not drawn salary from your company for the last three months because its income was significantly reduced. The situation is now improving and you’re restarting your salary next month but is it worth paying yourself the arrears? Bob Johnstone looks at the implications. If you are one of the...

Mrs A is the executor of her mother’s estate. Some valuable items were left to her and her sister. She wants to sell several of these to pay debts of the estate. Will there be any tax and if so, who is responsible for it? Family tax expert Brona MacDougall provides the answers. Administering an...

Rishi Sunak has written to the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) requesting a review of the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) regime. He asks the OTS to determine whether the rules are ‘fit for purpose’ and whether they could be simplified. He also asks them to address ‘areas where the present rules can distort behaviour or...

The Statutory Residence Test is quite a methodical and precise set of tests which are not open to much interpretation in the main. The application of ‘exceptional circumstances’ has, for most of us, rarely been seen in practice. What Qualifies as Exceptional Circumstances The main characteristics of an ‘exceptional circumstance’ are: 1. It is a...

HMRC has deferred by one year the deadline for businesses reporting under Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT to meet the requirement to have ‘digital links’ within their recordkeeping for transferring information from Excel spreadsheets and other data sources to their online VAT filing. Businesses will now be able to continue using their current ad-hoc...

Few businesses could ever have imagined, let alone made plans for, the potential impact of a massive epidemic such as the current coronavirus crisis. As accountants, we want to provide you with some practical steps that you can take. Keep in touch Keep in touch with your accountant. The sooner that they are made aware...

Your company is about to support a local charity. This will include donating the use of company equipment and employees’ time, as these resources will partly be used for non-business activity, will the related costs be tax deductible? Usually, if your business incurs costs in connection with making a gift, it won’t be entitled to...

Q. A friend has told you that he and his wife are taking a tax-free luxury weekend away on the company. Apparently, because the business has been running a long time HMRC allows this. Is this something you can take advantage of? A. Tax rules include a surprisingly long list of benefits in kind which...

Q. I’m a director and co-owner of a company. I use my own car for business journeys for which the company pays me a mileage allowance at HMRC’s official rates. Last month my car was off the road for over three weeks for repair and the insurance company provided me with a courtesy car. Apart...