COVID-19 sick pay rebate scheme closed in September

HM Treasury has announced that Chancellor Rishi Sunak will deliver the Autumn 2021 Budget on Wednesday 27 October. On 7 September the Chancellor launched Spending Review 2021, which will conclude on 27 October and will be presented alongside the Autumn Budget. The Spending Review will outline government departments’ resource and capital budgets from 2022/23 to 2024/25. The Spending Review is also expected to set out how the government will deliver on its promises to the British public through leading the…

From April 2022, the government plans to create a new social care levy which will see UK-wide tax and National Insurance Contribution (NIC) increases. There will be a 1.25% increase in NICs on earned income, with dividend tax rates also increasing by 1.25%. The money raised will be ringfenced for health and social care costs. The Levy will be effectively introduced from April 2022, when NIC for working age employees, the self-employed and employers will increase by 1.25% and be…

The government has delayed the introduction of Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax Self Assessment (MTD for ITSA) for a year, HMRC recently announced. The government says it has made the move in recognition of the challenges faced by many UK businesses as the country emerges from the pandemic. It will now introduce MTD for ITSA in the tax year beginning in April 2024, a year later than planned. It says the later start for MTD for ITSA gives…

The government has ‘named and shamed’ 191 companies that have broken National Minimum Wage (NMW) laws. Following investigations by HMRC, the named firms have been fined for owing £2.1 million to over 34,000 workers. The breaches took place between 2011 and 2018. Named employers have since been made to pay back what they owed to employees and were fined an additional £3.2 million. According to HMRC, 47% of firms wrongly deducted pay from workers’ wages, including for uniforms and expenses.…

The BCC has urged the government to extend skills training in light of the publication of research which showed that one in five companies are considering making redundancies as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The BCC has stressed concerns that older workers could go unutilised unless support for retraining is put into place immediately. The BCC survey, which polled over 250 businesses with employees still on furlough, revealed that one in five are planning to make staff redundant…

HMRC has urged taxpayers to stay alert to the threat of digital scams and scammers claiming to represent HMRC. Research published by HMRC revealed that the number of tax-related scams has doubled in the past 12 months. In the past year HMRC has received more than one million referrals from the UK public in regard to suspicious contact, with many fraudsters offering ‘tax refunds’ or ‘rebates’. The research showed that HMRC received 441,954 reports of phone scams and more than…

The national roll-out of the new £100 spending limit for contactless card payments will begin from 15 October 2021, banking trade body UK Finance has confirmed. The decision to raise the contactless limit from £45 to £100 was made by HM Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) following a public consultation and discussions with both the retail and banking sectors. It follows on from the successful increase in the limit from £30 to £45 in April 2020. From 15…

The CIOT has warned that some claims being made by firms offering help with Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) refunds are too good to be true. The CIOT says an increasing number of firms are contacting buyers of properties after completion of a purchase, suggesting that SDLT has been overpaid. The most common issues raised are that multiple-dwellings relief (MDR) has not been claimed or that the buyer could have paid non-residential rates of SDLT (which are generally lower than…