Other news in brief

On 8 April 2024, the Welsh Government published a consultation seeking views on a proposal to abolish land transaction tax (LTT) multiple-dwellings relief (MDR) from 1 June 2024 (to coincide with the abolition of Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) MDR) or as soon as possible thereafter. It is also considering abolishing from the same date the rule that allows purchases of six or more dwellings in a single transaction to benefit from the lower non-residential rates of LTT which would be a significant step further than the SDLT changes. The Welsh Government is also seeking views on extending an existing LTT relief to Welsh local authorities when purchasing property for social housing purposes and options to review or amend other LTT reliefs. The consultation is open until 19 May 2024.

HMRC have updated the Patent Box guidance in the Corporate Intangibles Research and Development Manual to reflect recent changes made to the Research and Development and Creative Sector Tax Reliefs including:

• Confirming that for R&D fraction purposes, there are no changes to how the fraction is calculated as a result of the merged R&D regime that has been introduced for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024. This includes that R&D taking place outside of the UK will continue to be considered for all components of the R&D fraction despite the restrictions applied to overseas expenditure within the R&D regimes; and
• Confirming that the new Audio-Visual Expenditure Credits and Video Games Expenditure Credits will be excluded income for Patent Box purposes and that costs that are qualifying expenditure for these credits are not routine deductions for Patent Box purposes. This brings both in line with the Patent Box treatment of the existing R&D Expenditure Credit. 

The last five years have thrown up non-stop challenges for businesses and their people agendas. What can we expect next? We try to predict this in our article What can we expect for total Reward in the rest of 2024?