More detail on dividend changes
HMRC has issued a factsheet about next year’s dividend tax changes. The Summer Budget announcement of a change to the rules on dividend taxation from next April caused many furrowed brows. The situation was not helped by the very limited detail available from HMRC on the new regime and no legislation in the Finance Bill […]
Chinese whimpers not whispers…
The Chinese mainland stock markets have had a torrid two months. On 9 June, MSCI, a major provider of global stock market indices, announced that this year it would not be including in its Emerging Markets Index mainland China shares (A-shares) listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen. The decision had been widely awaited and the two […]
Doffing the care cost cap
The proposal for a care cost cap in England has been put on hold. Back in 2011, the Dilnot Commission proposed a cap of £35,000 on lifetime personal liability for care costs. The Commission’s report was the latest in a long line of government enquiries into the thorny issue of funding long term care in […]
Deposit protection to fall
The compensation for lost deposits is to be cut by £10,000. On the first Friday in July, a few days before the Budget, the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) announced that the level of Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) protection for depositors was to be cut with immediate effect from £85,000 to £75,000. The PRA, which […]
MSCIng Out
One of the main stock market index providers made an important decision on China in June. There was a time, long ago, when stock market indices were simple yardsticks, mainly of interest to professional investment managers. These days the number of indices has hugely proliferated – you name it and there is probably an index […]
Buy-to-let gets squeezed
The Summer Budget contained two important changes to buy-to-let taxation. In the run up to the July Budget there were a number of stories in the press about the generosity of the tax treatment enjoyed by buy-to-let landlords. Whether or not these were planted by the Treasury, it is probably no coincidence that Mr Osborne […]
Dividends and tax – a Summer Budget surprise
One of the surprises of the Summer Budget was announcement of new tax rules for dividends from April 2016. Dividend taxation has long been one of the more arcane parts of the UK’s complex tax regime. For many years, dividends have had their own tax rates and a 10% tax credit that has not been […]
The £1,000,000 inheritance tax exemption
Mr Osborne has made good his manifesto commitment to ease the burden of inheritance tax, but his approach is not simple. One of the surprises in the Conservative manifesto was the proposal to create a new transferable main residence band of £175,000 per person for inheritance tax (IHT). The idea was criticised by many, including […]
1 in 6 pay more than basic rate tax
HMRC have updated their income tax payer data HMRC regularly updates data on income tax payers and last month it produced a revised set of numbers. These give an interesting insight into the drivers behind tax policy, and in particular, the emphasis on reducing tax avoidance. HMRC estimates there will be 29.7 million income […]
Deflation arrives
The official rate of inflation fell below zero in April: prices are now dropping year on year. The April reading for the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) was an annual rate of -0.1%, which is the lowest level since the index was officially launched in 1990. On an unofficial ‘back-tested’ estimated you have to go back […]