Hello,

February has been an extremely busy month and this is reflected in the content of this week's Web-update. We are taking a look at HMRC's latest Agent Update and Employer Bulletin, having a speed-read-refresher on the key measures in the new Finance Act, there are a couple of new consultations from HMRC on administration and powers and, of course, we have reviewed some interesting cases, including two from the Upper Tribunal (UT).

Hello 

They say that a week is a long time in politics; the same is sometimes true in tax! HMRC’s plan to change the classification of double cab pick-ups for employment benefit and Capital Allowance purposes back-fired over the weekend, due to pressure from industry lobby groups. This led to a reversal in policy (a U-turn!). The result is that double cab pick-ups remain vans and are not cars.

Days after announcing that HMRC was going to make business owners reclassify their double cab pick-ups as ‘cars’ for employment benefit and capital allowance purposes, HMRC has changed its policy. 

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Double cab pick-up: a car or van? The answer might lie in the number of passenger doors, but even the physicist Erwin Schrödinger might have been bemused to find that HMRC has announced that soon it will no longer interpret the meaning of 'car' for Benefit In Kind (BIK) and capital allowance purposes in line with the VAT definition. It will, during a transitional period, accept that cars may be vans, meaning that advantage can be taken of the current rules for a time.

Hello,

HMRC's latest campaign aims to identify undeclared dividend income. As you all know, most small companies' accounts do not show the amount of dividends that have been paid to their owners. HMRC can calculate the level of distributions made by making a comparison of a company's reserves from one year to the next from its accounts submitted for Corporation Tax.