The Tonnage Tax (Training Requirement) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2025 were laid before the House of Commons on 9 September 2025 and will come into force from 1 October 2025. The UK Tonnage Tax regime requires the training of officer cadets (see The Tonnage Tax (Training Requirement) Regulations 2000). If this cannot be achieved it requires payments in lieu of training (PILOTs) to be made. The rate of PILOTs normally increases annually in line with inflation. This year, however, the increases are around 20 percent, which more than makes up for the rate freeze in 2024. The standard monthly PILOT is to increase from £1,421 to £1,705. The ‘basic’ rate used to calculate PILOT based penalties is to increase from £1,329 to £1,613. Many global groups are interested in joining UK tonnage tax at present and the qualifying UK cadets will be at a premium. This 20 percent rate hike will be an extra cost for such groups if they simply cannot find the cadets to recruit.
Tonnage tax training payments to increase by 20 percent
Synthesised text of the Multilateral Instrument and UK-Thailand and UK-Vietnam Double Taxation Conventions published
HMRC have added synthesised text of the Multilateral Instrument and the 1981 UK-Thailand Double Taxation Convention and the 1994 UK-Vietnam Double Taxation Agreement to the collection of published tax treaties on their website. The synthesised text reflects the changes made to those treaties by the OECD’s Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (commonly known as the Multilateral Instrument or MLI).