Where Will it all End?

Under new rules introduced last year, certain ‘tax schemes’ are now required to be registered with the Inland Revenue by the schemes’ promoters. This doesn’t necessarily render the scheme ineffective but brings it to the Revenue’s attention. This in turn provides, in the government’s words, ‘early warning of avoidance schemes’ and enables them ‘to respond to tax avoidance’. The result to date has been a whole raft of new anti-avoidance provisions attempting to block perceived loopholes in the legislation. They range in scope from bonuses paid in the form of certain shares and securities, to double tax relief and capital gains tax.

The trend looks set to continue and, with effect from 1 July 2005, schemes to avoid stamp duty land tax on commercial property are brought within the registration scheme.

Meanwhile whilst helping you to plan (legitimately!) to minimise your tax liabilities, we regularly learn of fraudsters attempting to take your money in other ways! We refer in the article above to a Companies House scam and alert you to two more below.

The Health and Safety Executive has been warning businesses about a bogus organisation, the ‘Health and Safety Registration Enforcement Division’ seeking to charge hundreds of pounds to run ‘checks’ and register businesses with an ‘enforcing agency’.

More recently the Charity Commission has warned that fraudsters are obtaining charities’ bank account details from Gift Aid forms and using this information to extract funds from the charity by setting up standing orders.

It sometimes feels as though we’re being attacked from all sides. Please do talk to us if you have any questions on the issues we have raised.