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There was a large degree of apprehension, both at the session and at the event in general, towards the DTA and HMRC’s API strategy. He wasn’t there to represent or defend ‪HMRC‬

‎DNSAssociates‬ provides information on auto enrolment,SSAS. and SERVICES like complex sharing and director's loan planning which no other accountants can provide.

Existing NOW: Pensions customers will not be affected by the charge even if they are staging in or after 2016.

At the same time the workplace pensions provider is launching a month-long consultation aimed at finding out the needs of small employers and will use feedback from the consultation to set the new fees.

The new ‪proposition is likely to include online support such as screen share and live chat, longer contact center opening hours and a named individual to support employers.

Concern continues to grow that those firms yet to stage will have to turn to the government-backed ‪NEST‬ scheme as other providers struggle to make money out of smaller firms.

NEST is not currently planning to introduce a similar fee although it already charges the employee 1.8% up front.

If you live in France, Holland, Belgium, Ireland or Poland, then bridge is accepted by the ‪#‎tax‬ authorities as a sport as far as VAT ‪#‎exemption‬ is concerned in relation to ‪#‎competition‬ entry fees paid to non-profit making bodies.

Unfortunately for UK based players, HMRC disagree and have always collected 20% VAT on competition fees. But is that about to change?‪#‎HMRC‬ might be forced into a rethink because the Upper Tribunal has referred the issue to the European courts following the case of The‪#‎English‬ Bridge Union Ltd (EBU) (case ref: UKUT0401), an appeal by the taxpayer after the First-tier Tribunal supported HMRC’s view that bridge was not a sport.

The cross-party ‪group will also involve prominent MPs including former Conservative party chairman David Davis, Labour's John McFall, who formerly chaired the Treasury committee. Richard Bacon, the Conservative MP for South Norfolk who is currently a member of the PAC, will also be involved. The ‪secretary for the group is Peterborough MP Stuart Jackson.

The group has pledged to ‪explore‬ the ways in which parliament can help to build and maintain the fair, sustainable and transparent tax system that is needed if individuals, businesses and markets are to create growth and prosperity both in the ‪UK‬ and ‪‎internationally‬.

The move is backed by think tank CoVi and also has the support of Oxfam, CBI, Action Aid and CIPFA.

Hodge (pictured) said: "In recent years the issue of who pays tax and how much they pay has really struck a chord with the public. We want Parliament to continue to play a key role in building and maintaining the fair, sustainable and transparent tax system that is needed to create growth and ‪‎prosperity both in the UK and internationally."

Richard Barr was sentenced yesterday of misconduct in public office. Barr used his insider ‪information‬ to warn Darren Oliver and Wayne Cockerill, also from Birmingham, that tax scheme had been rumbled. Barr told them to destroy or hide evidence.

Barr had denied the charges against him but was found guilty of after a trial at Manchester Crown ‪Court‬ in January 2015.

“During the time you were an HMRC officer you became aware of the over half a million pound fraud perpetrated by good friends,” said Judge Robert Atherton in his sentencing. “You tipped them off and provided guidance and advice which they followed. As a former Police and ‪‎Customs‬ Officer you know the public expect a high level of integrity, and confidentiality is of prime importance. Your previous good character does not count.”

As a director at TaxCalc and chair of the software trade body’s accountants in practice group, Checkley has been heavily involved in developments around the way HMRC systems interact with third party software.

As presented by HMRC, the API strategy will open up the data within the department to a new generation of third party software suppliers. Rather than continuing to handle significant chunks of tax software development in-house, HMRC is hoping to improve the “customer” experience by harnessing the creativity and enthusiasm of app developers.

The fate of HMRC’s ‪software‬ strategy is currently in the hands of ministers undertaking Whitehall’s post-Budget spending review. But Checkley is hopeful that it will survive intact.

George Osborne plans to scrap the current lower ‪tax‬ rates applicable to dividend income with a new £5,000 tax-free dividend allowance for all taxpayers. The change was also accompanied by increased tax rates on dividend income. The rates will be set at 7.5%, 32.5% and 38.1%, equivalent to an increase of 7.5% overall where dividend income exceeds £5,000.

The petition was initiated by Frauke Golding, who runs her own business as well as being a financial director and accountant. She wrote that the tax “flies in the face of risk and reward for running a business and contributing to the ‪economy‬.

The central tenets of Laffer’s supply side economic theory argues for limiting government and cutting tax rates, especially the rate levied on top earners, which Laffer argues will unleash ‪‎faster‬ economic growth.

A curious artefact of Laffer’s thought is the eponymously named Laffer curve. The curve resembles a boomerang, plotting the tax rate and tax revenue on separate axes. The curve’s logic dictates that there’s a point where raising the top rate of tax becomes counterproductive, decreasing tax yield. It’s beguilingly elegant, a simple non-threatening curve that’s easy to understand at a glance.

The ‪problem‬ with the curve is its wrong on two levels, both mechanically and philosophically. For instance, the curve argues that a 100% tax rate would stop all activity – but that’s not strictly true, said Richard Murphy. He pointed out, that this was the model under which Soviet Russia operated. “As a policy, it was absurd – but it does suggest the curve was wrong,” he said.

Here then are the 7 most common observations I make and which can help explain why an accountant’s website isn’t doing all you want it to:

- Failing to make it easy for prospects to find what they want I don’t agree with those marketing people who claim you need to keep people on your website for as long as possible.

- Failing to say who YOU are So many accountancy sites have an ‘about us’ page that contains a pretty generic description of what could be almost any other firm in the UK

Parliament makes the tax law, but HMRC design the tax compliance system including the tax forms and procedures for penalties and appeals. Recently HMRC have been inserting too many traps in the tax compliance system which they say are there to prevent unintended tax breaks, but which catch out unwary taxpayers.

The £100 automatic ‪penalty‬ for late submission of a tax return is a good example. Appeals against these penalties create a huge workload for HMRC, and the costs of dealing with those appeals must surely outweigh the penalties charged. There are no available ‪‎statistics‬ on how many of those automatic penalties are actually collected, or how much of that revenue is reinvested to reduce the number of taxpayers who struggle to comply.

The trusts recovered some of the VAT they paid from the ‪managers‬, who made ‘in time’ claims for refunds from HMRC, Deloitte explains in a summary of the case.

But after exhausting claims against the managers, the trusts pursued 'restitutionary' claims against ‪HMRC‬ - seeking payment of the difference between the gross VAT charged by the managers and the net sums repaid to them by HMRC. One of the issues in the case was a three-year (now four year) cap on claims in the VAT Act.

In ‪#‎February‬, the ‪‎Court‬ of Appeal decided that the VAT Act capping provisions did not apply to the restitutionary claims but that they were confined to the net VAT paid to HMRC by the managers.

HMRC's chief executive ‪‎apologized‬ for the figures and said the revenue's service had not been "up to scratch". The ‪#‎service‬ has pledged to invest £45m in about 3,000 customer services staff. Another 2,000 staff will be moved temporarily from within the HMRC to help with the tax credits deadline and letters and forms, it said.

‪#‎HMRC‬ set a target to answer 80% of calls. But the figures showed that in some months only about two in three (65.5%) of phone calls were answered. In September 20.8% of people heard busy tones and could not join a phone queue when they called, while 13.7% of calls were not answered.

In total 7.2 million calls made to the HMRC last year - 11% of all calls - ended with people hearing a busy tone.

In a recent AnyAnswers post, taxwriter tried to gauge whether HMRC is changing its approach to cases where VAT has been deliberately underpaid. “I have heard of two cases recently where the client was questioned at a ‪PoliceStation‬ under caution under PACE [Police and Criminal Evidence act] rules with regard to underpaid VAT”.

Glennzy backed tax writer's suspicions, “I don’t really get involved much in this type of thing but know of others who do and have heard that there are incidents of relatively small amounts of tax with #HMRC seeking to prosecute particularly by VAT officers”.

“You always assume that criminal prosecutions only happen if the money involved is large sums like 5 figures,” Glenzzy added.