Other news in brief

The Government has announced that draft clauses for the next Finance Bill, largely covering pre-announced policy changes, will be published on Tuesday 20 July 2021. This stage of the tax policy cycle is now referred to as ‘L-Day’. The announcement confirmed that the following would also be published: “accompanying explanatory notes, tax information and impact notes, responses to consultations and other supporting documents”. Commentary on the materials that are published on L-Day will be included in the next edition of Tax Matters Digest.

On 2 July 2021, the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) published a new report: Making better use of third party data: a vision for the future. It sets out recommendations following the conclusion of a review which looked at, amongst other things, the tax reporting of individuals' savings and investment income and the way individuals claim certain tax reliefs. The OTS report includes nine recommendations for the Government to consider including, notably, that banks, building societies and pension providers should be mandated by law to report data directly to HMRC and that this data then be made visible to taxpayers and their agents via HMRC’s planned ‘Single Customer Accounts’.  The expectation would be that, at some point in the future, this would remove the need for many taxpayers to submit a self-assessment return. These are only recommendations and we will need to wait and see how the Government responds.

On 15 July 2021 HMRC published a Policy Paper, Tax debt, government lending schemes and Company Voluntary Arrangements (CVAs), setting out further detail on their approach to tax debts, specifically in CVA cases and cases where businesses have utilised Government lending schemes. For more information on HMRC’s wider approach to tax debts please see our earlier article.

HMRC have released some basic guidance in relation to claiming relief from Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) on acquisitions of interests in land in a designated Freeport tax site.  The guidance summarises the conditions for the relief and provides some simple examples as to how the SDLT should be calculated where the interest in land acquired includes a mixture of land acquired for qualifying and non-qualifying use and/or where some land is outside and some inside the Freeport tax site. Detailed guidance is awaited, which it is hoped will address issues such as what constitutes ancillary land, and how the clawback provisions are intended to operate where there is to be workers accommodation provided for on an area of land acquired. The guidance confirms that the Freeport tax sites have not yet been designated so the relief is not currently available.

Scott Cullen, Head of Reward Consulting at KPMG in the UK, discusses the impact COVID-19 has had, and is likely to have on HR and Reward, in his recent vlog.

Our 2021 survey, providing an overview of executive and non-executive directors’ remuneration in AIM listed companies has now been published. Chris Barnes, Head of Reward at KPMG in the UK, discusses the highlights in his recent vlog.

The BRC-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor for June has recently been published reporting on the turbulent year 2020 was for retail and the impact it had on sales and making meaningful comparisons. In that context, 2021 sales will be compared to 2019.