HMRC

HMRC suffered a huge IR35 blow at the Court of Appeal after the three judges unanimously rejected their primary ground of appeal, despite the case now being ...

The position under earlier contracts between the same parties is admissible as part of the factual matrix, since it will be known to both parties at the date(s) of the relevant contract(s), but not the position under later contracts between the same parties. If any further fact-finding or evidence were permitted, it would then be necessary to decide whether the case should be remitted to the UT or the FTT." - "Secondly, …, if mutuality of obligation and a right of control are present, then there will inevitably have to be one or more factors pointing the other way if the court or tribunal is to conclude that the contract is not one of employment; but that does not mean that the court or tribunal should divorce its evaluation of the other factors from its assessment of the first two conditions. It is also necessary to bear in mind that an individual may simultaneously be engaged under a contract of employment with one counterparty and under contracts for the provision of services with one or more other counterparties." In the present context, that means the contract(s) relevant to the tax year(s) in question. Chaplin says: "None of these necessary actions by HMRC will surprise them because they are their ideas, confirmed in oral evidence to the Public Accounts Committee on 21st February 2022. In a case like the present, the issue is one of interpretation of a written contract (or, to be more precise, a hypothetical contract derived from a written contract with the alteration of the identity of one of the contracting parties). That contract, like any other agreement in writing, should not be construed in a vacuum, but in the light of the admissible factual matrix. It follows that a factual circumstance known to both parties at the date of the contract (such as, for example, the fact that the person providing the work has an established career as a freelance) should be taken into account. It also follows that a factual circumstance not known or reasonably available to one party (such as, for example, the precise terms on which the person doing the work has performed work for other parties if those terms have not been disclosed to the alleged employer) cannot be taken into account." Both approaches have a common core: mutuality of obligation and a right of control are necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for a contract of employment, and if those conditions are satisfied it is necessary to go on to consider a range of other factors." Chaplin says: "In many cases for freelancers, the stages of personal service and control could fail to reach any meaningful conclusion, especially where someone is hired to do a specific task and only paid for work done. This clarification by the Court of Appeal is a significant victory for freelancers who are in business on their own account.

A Freedom of Information request to HMRC has revealed that only 153241 UK Trust registrations have been received since the Trustee Registration Service ...

"It is to be hoped that HMRC has used its past experience of the spike in registrations in Q1 of 2018 to ensure the current system is ready for the expected surge, but it's important that advisers encourage their trustee clients who may be impacted to register well ahead of the deadline." This means that almost 170,000 trusts would need to be registered each month to meet the deadline. It is to be hoped that HMRC has used its past experience of the spike in registrations in Q1 of 2018 to ensure the current system is ready for the expected surge, but it’s important that advisers encourage their trustee clients who may be impacted to register well ahead of the deadline.”

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) revealed that just 153,241 trusts have been registered since the service began in June ...

Now the life insurer said there has been another uptick with the 1 September deadline approaching. Stacey Love, tax and estate planning specialist at Canada Life, said: “We’ve had a strong start to the year for successful registrations but given recent estimates that one million registrations may need to be completed, I suspect HMRC will experience a flood of registrations over the coming months. Most express trusts need to be registered with the taxman by 1 September 2022, with responsibility firmly on the shoulders of the trustees to submit through the HMRC portal.