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Though it was introduced almost a decade ago in January 2013, many parents and guardians may still be unaware of the High Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBC). This Child Benefit Tax applies to anyone earning more than £50,000 a year while claiming Child Benefit for a child in their household.

However, many workers who are used to being taxed through their employer’s PAYE system won’t realise that the government expects them to submit annual self-assessment tax returns for HICBC. This has led to HMRC sending hundreds of thousands of letters about suspected non-compliance, hitting families with surprise bills and fines during a time that’s already financially difficult for many.

The Office for Tax Simplification (OTS) has been extremely critical of the HICBC implementation, issuing recommendations for improvement that HMRC has yet to follow. The question is, can the Child Benefit Tax be fixed? Or are the problems with enforcing HICBC declarations and collecting HICBC payments only the tip of the iceberg? Should the government rethink the whole scheme?

While the Making Tax Digital (MTD) scheme has been in place since April 2019, there were some exclusions. The first phase was registering businesses with an annual turnover of £85,000, while those below the threshold could register voluntarily. As of April 2022, the next phase requires all VAT-registered businesses to sign up to Making Tax Digital, regardless of their annual turnover.

Every VAT-registered business must also register with MTD, keeping VAT records and submitting VAT returns digitally through the MTD software. Some lower-turnover businesses may already be doing this after registering voluntarily, but for those who aren’t yet, it’s no longer possible to delay.

The Department for Education (DfE) is introducing new rules for student loan repayments for students starting university from September 2023. This is part of a response to a 2019 review of the higher education system, and an attempt to tackle the problem of soaring national student debt.

With the nation’s student debt currently at £161 billion, and only around 25% of undergraduates starting courses in 2020-2021 expected to fully repay their student loans, the government believes that lowering thresholds and extending schedules will lead to more students repaying loans in full.

More students enter higher education every year, with many taking on debt for low-quality courses that don’t lead to long-term employment opportunities. This means the current loan system isn’t sustainable, but under the new system, an estimated 70% of students will be able to repay in full.

Just as employees must build up National Insurance Contributions (NICs) throughout their working life in order to access state benefits, so must those in self-employment. However, employers usually set up the PAYE system to deduct Class 1 NICs automatically for their workers, while self-employed people must pay Class 2 and/or Class 4 contributions directly to HMRC after submitting a tax return.

Following an announcement last September, the government has introduced a 1.25% increase to NICs from April 2022 – known as the Health and Social Care Levy. Despite this increase, it seems that self-employed people with profits within a certain limit could actually pay less in NICs in 2022.

Let’s look into the latest changes for self-employed NICs and what they’ll mean for you this year.

It’s no secret that the pandemic has had a huge impact on the UK’s finances, with the government looking to recoup the costs of various COVID-19 economic support packages. At the end of 2020, a newly launched independent think-tank called the Wealth Tax Commission published a report that pushed the idea of a UK wealth tax back into popular discussion.

The Wealth Tax Commission report suggested that restructuring the tax system is the most viable option, and that the government should be taxing wealth and other types of income instead of only increasing taxes on employment earnings.

Many economists think that such a wealth tax could be the solution to the UK’s soaring public debt and financial inequality crises. Yet none of the Chancellor’s budget announcements in the last two years has explored the concept – so what happened to introducing a wealth tax?

A recent First-Tier Tribunal (FTT) ruling in favour of the taxpayer has challenged HMRC’s belief that renting out a room or piece of land alone is not exempt from VAT. In the case of HMRC vs Errol Willy Salons, the FTT dismissed HMRC’s VAT assessment in support of aggrieved salon owner Errol Willy.