our blog

According to the annual Sunday Times Rich List, the 350 richest families and individuals in the UK have a combined wealth of £796.5 billion.

At a time when many people in the UK are struggling to afford necessities like food and heating, it’s not surprising that campaigners are using the Rich List to renew calls for a wealth tax to reduce the growing inequality between the richest and poorest.

This would be a tax on net wealth, rather than a levy on specific income or asset types. A one-off wealth tax has been proposed before by the Wealth Tax Commission.

Back in 2020, the think tank suggested a 5% tax on wealth above £500,000, payable over five years, which could have produced around £260 billion. Despite receiving considerable media attention, the government seemed to take no notice.

A few years on, several organisations have come together to campaign for a different wealth tax on the very richest, which could raise up to £22 billion a year.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) revealed in June that the estimated tax gap has stayed at 4.8% for the 2021–2022 tax year, the same as the revised figure for 2020–2021.

Published annually, the Measuring Tax Gaps report analyses the difference between the amount of tax HMRC expected to take and the amount of tax actually paid.

While the headline figure shows the tax gap hasn’t changed in percentage terms, in monetary terms, the difference has increased from £31 billion the year before to £35.8 billion in 2021–2022.

The tax gap percentage has likely remained stable despite the monetary difference because tax liabilities also rose from £643 billion the previous year to £739 billion, in turn likely due to inflation and fiscal drag.

Overall, the tax gap has been gradually falling over the years from 7.5% in 2005, as the government has continued to adjust policies to address the tax evasion, criminal activity, and general carelessness that contribute to it.

Here’s what the latest figures reveal about what’s causing the tax gap, and what this could mean for businesses and self-employed individuals.

The Department for Business and Trade has published a list of 202 companies that failed to pay their lowest-paid workers the minimum wage.
Ranging from major high street retailers to small businesses and traders, the named companies have altogether underpaid 63,000 workers.
Not only have these employers been ordered to repay their workers, but they also face penalties of almost £7 million for breaching the law.
The naming and shaming of non-complying companies and charging of penalties makes it clear that no business is exempt from paying the minimum wage.
However, with even major retailers being caught out, it is also clear that statutory minimum wage rules can be complicated, and compliance can be difficult.
Let’s look into some of the reasons for these failures, and how other employers can learn from them to avoid breaking minimum wage laws.

As of June 2023, taxpayers who were named in the leaked Pandora Papers are being given a final chance to set their tax affairs straight.

The leak in October 2021 revealed through almost twelve million documents that some taxpayers were using shell companies to hide wealth, avoiding tax charges on property and luxury items like yachts.

After reviewing the papers, HMRC has identified UK residents who may have untaxed assets in offshore havens and is now writing to warn them of potential penalties.

The letters inform recipients that if they do not report their overseas income correctly, they could face financial penalties or prosecution.

If you have received a HMRC Pandora Papers letter, here is what you should know about the situation and what you should do next.

The time limit for an individual to fill gaps in their record by paying voluntary National Insurance contributions is 6 years, but deadline extensions are now giving people extra time to plug gaps and boost their State Pensions.

Originally, the cut-off for making voluntary NI contributions for the tax years from 2006–2017 was this April, but the government extended the deadline to the end of this July to give people a little more time to address gaps in their records.

Now, as announced in June, the government is further extending this deadline to 5th April 2025 – allowing an additional couple of years for people to make retrospective NI payments for gaps between 2006–2007 and 2017–2018.

It’s believed the deadline has been extended this far to ensure as many people as possible can get the help they need with completing their NI records, as the government’s pension helplines were reportedly overwhelmed in the last few months.

The cost of voluntary NI contributions for these years is also frozen until the new deadline, at the former rate of £15.85 per week (though the current rate is £17.45).

This means that people can properly consider whether they need to pay voluntary NI contributions or not, preventing some from missing out on increasing their State Pension entitlements. Read on to learn how your pension could be affected.

Fraud is now the most common crime committed in England and Wales, with 1 in 15 people falling victim to fraudsters and 9 in 10 internet users encountering online scams.

Financial fraud can have a devastating impact on people’s lives, with bank accounts and life savings drained in a matter of minutes – fraud victims lost a collective £2.35 billion in 2021.

It can also be costly for businesses, with 18% falling victim in 2017–2020, and UK Finance members from the banking and finance industry losing over £1.3 billion to fraud in 2021.

To tackle the growing threat of fraud in the UK, the government has announced a new initiative – ‘Fraud Strategy: Stopping scams and protecting the public’.