Proskauer - Tax Talks (JD Supra United Kingdom)

This was an appeal against the High Court decision in Dodika Ltd & Ors v United Luck Group Holdings Limited from August 2020 (see our Tax Blog on this). The case concerns the question of whether the notice given by the buyer to the sellers under a sale and purchase agreement (“SPA”) of a potential claim under a tax covenant complied with the requirements of the SPA.

The UK has now been in lockdown, on and off, for the best part of a year. With the COVID-19 vaccination programme now in full swing in the UK, and hopefully with light at the end of tunnel, attention has inevitably turned to the question of “how are we going to pay for it all?”. Sweeping and significant tax rises have been feared and, following last year’s Office of Tax Simplification (OTS)...

On 30 December, the UK government laid regulations that will significantly reduce the type of cross-border arrangement that will need to be reported by UK intermediaries under the so-called DAC 6 rules on 31 January 2021 and in the future.

The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) has published its first report following its review of certain aspects of the UK’s capital gains tax regime requested by the Chancellor in July this year with the specific purpose of identifying opportunities relating to technical and administrative issues as well as areas where the present rules can distort behaviour or do not meet their policy intent. This

The UK Chancellor has today announced that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (the furlough scheme) and the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) will be extended against “a worsening economic backdrop”.

As the UK braces itself for a second wave of COVID-19 the UK Chancellor has announced the Treasury’s Winter Economy Plan with the aim of protecting jobs and supporting businesses over the coming months. Despite the measures introduced in the Chancellor’s Summer Statement (reported by us https://www.proskauer.com/blog/chancellors-summer-statement-focuses-on-hospitality-sector), the UK’s...

As the UK’s lockdown is relaxed and unemployment figures are expected to continue to rise, the UK Chancellor gave his summer statement announcing measures to stimulate the economy as it recovers from the effects of coronavirus with a clear emphasis on encouraging people to spend money, particularly in the hospitality sector, to try to protect as many jobs as possible.

The UK’s First-tier tax tribunal (FTT) has just released an interesting decision considering whether or not expenses incurred by a parent company on advisers’ fees that related to a proposed disposal by a group subsidiary and were charged on to its subsidiary were deductible as expenses of management of the subsidiary under section 1219 of the Corporation Tax Act 2009 because the decisions in...

In response to the COVID-19 crisis HMRC has updated its guidance on the process for getting documents stamped and paying the stamp duty, including that: Stock transfer forms should not be posted to the Stamp Office. Instead an electronic copy (which can be a scanned PDF) should be emailed to HMRC at stampdutymailboxhmrc.gov.uk. The form should be fully completed, signed and dated. For these...

There has been considerable discussion about the effect that the travel restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic might have on the tax residence of companies, particularly where directors are stuck in a different jurisdiction and cannot attend board meetings as they would in normal circumstances.

In these testing times the ramifications of COVID-19 continue to be felt in every area of personal and corporate life. With lockdowns announced around the world, including in the UK on 23 March 2020, travel has been severely curtailed and business practices are having to change accordingly. Below we discuss what this means for determining the tax residency of companies and individuals.

Earlier this evening (26 March 2020) the UK Chancellor announced the new Self-Employed Income Support Scheme to help the self-employed face the economic hardship wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Below are the key points: The scheme will provide direct cash grants of 80 per cent of individuals’ taxable profits (based on average monthly trading profit over the three tax years 2016-17, 2017-18...

Earlier this evening the UK Chancellor announced an economic intervention which is “unprecedented in the history of the British state” with measures to support the United Kingdom economy in the midst of COVID-19. Below are the key measures he announced for businesses...

In addition to the measures announced in last week’s UK Budget 2020 (as we reported in our Tax Talks blog of 16 March 2020 The UK Budget and Coronavirus), at the UK Prime Minister’s daily briefing today the UK Chancellor announced further measures to support businesses affected by coronavirus (COVID-19).

As part of the UK’s Budget 2020, the Treasury has announced a range of measures aimed at assisting UK businesses, in particular small and medium sized businesses (SMEs), in tackling disruption caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

There has been much talk recently about “review and reform” (or abolition) of entrepreneurs’ relief. This seems to have moved a step closer this week with Boris Johnson stating that the Treasury are “fulminating” against it on the basis that it made “staggeringly rich” people “even more staggeringly rich”. The debate about this was kicked off last November with an IFS study highlighting that the...

Draft legislation included in the Finance Bill 2019-2020 will potentially make directors and certain other individuals closely connected to a company jointly and severally liable for a company’s tax liabilities that arise from avoidance, evasion or repeated insolvency and non-payment of tax debts or tax-related penalties of the company.

New rules to be introduced from April 2020 will make certain companies who engage workers through intermediaries (the “client”) subject to...

There has been another development on the tricky but important subject of whether the rights attaching to preference shares mean that they are or are not ordinary shares for entrepreneurs’ relief (and other tax) purposes. Recent cases have shown that share with no right to a dividend are ordinary shares. HMRC has published its view that cumulative fixed rate share are not ordinary shares but...

On 6 July 2018 the UK Finance Bill 2019 was published by the UK Government. The draft Finance Bill contains the details of the new regime on taxation of non-UK resident investors in UK real estate that had been proposed in a consultation by HMRC following the November 2017 Budget. The rules will come into force on 6 April 2019 and, for the first time, the charge to UK capital gains tax will be...

The proposed amendment to entrepreneurs’ relief (“ER”) in Finance Bill 2019 is designed to address one of the outstanding issues with the current law when dilution of a company results in the loss of ER. Under the current rules, a shareholder who has held, for at least 12 months prior to disposal, at least 5% of both the ordinary shares and 5% of the voting rights in a trading company (or holding

The UK Government has announced in today’s Budget (22 November) that it is launching a consultation on extending the scope of UK tax on real estate. Currently, non-UK residents who are investors in UK land and buildings are outside the scope of UK tax on gains on commercial property. They pay income tax on the net rental income but not on gains on disposal. Currently, only gains on UK...

The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber), the UK’s second level tax appeal court, have just published their judgement in the McQuillan case, which considered whether shares with no right to dividends or any other profits are or are not “ordinary share capital” (OSC) for UK tax purposes. There are a number of UK tax rules that depend on how much OSC is held, and OSC is defined as all share...

As mentioned in our July 2017 edition of UK Tax Round Up, the UK has enacted a new corporate criminal offence of failing to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion. The law comes into effect on 30th September 2017, and businesses should ensure that they have considered its impact before then. A risk assessment could be required to be carried out before 30th September, and applicable policies and...

Following the UK general election on 8 June 2017, at which Theresa May’s Conservative party won the largest number of seats but lost its overall majority, the Queen’s Speech setting out the now minority Conservative government’s legislative programme for the next two years was delivered on 21 June 2017 at the state opening of Parliament. As expected, some of the less popular Conservative...

After numerous UK tax changes affecting asset managers over the past few years – not least the wholesale re-vamping of the tax treatment of carried interest and other fund participations for investment fund managers – the UK government’s budget last week (8 March 2017) was a relatively uneventful affair for those in the investment management sphere.

Many people will be familiar with the information gathering and reporting requirements the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard (“CRS”) places on financial institutions. The first exchanges of information between tax authorities will take place next year, with all CRS jurisdictions exchanging information by 2018. And we are now starting to see how tax authorities expect this information to change the