Spring Budget 2023 analysis and comment

The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, today delivered his second major fiscal statement of his first six months in office, confirming what many commentators had been predicting. That this would be a very light budget in terms of tax policy changes, leaving the focus firmly on tackling inflation, the cost of living crisis and fluctuating energy prices.

MTD for ITSA Delayed Until 2026

In a statement made by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Victoria Atkins MP, the timetable for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment will once again be delayed.

The mandation of MTD for ITSA is now planned to be introduced from April 2026, with businesses, self-employed individuals, and landlords with income over £50,000 mandated to join first.

A recessionary budget from a principled chancellor?

The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, today confirmed that the UK is now officially in recession. His response was to introduce two new fiscal rules and two new fiscal principles.

• Rule 1: That the UK’s national debt must fall as a share of GDP by the fifth year of a rolling five-year period; and
• Rule 2: That public sector borrowing in the same year must be below 3% of GDP. 

Overall, the Autumn Statement is set to improve public finances by £55 billion by 2027-28, with the OBR forecasting both of these rules to be met a year early in 2026-27.

Autumn 2022 Mini-Budget analysis and comment

The key announcements in Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's Mini-Budget.

Press leaks, tax cuts, rumours, anticipation… All the hallmarks of a budget are present bar one – any requirement for the proposals to be scrutinised by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility. This is not, of course, unusual in recent times. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the energy bills package and the health and social care levy were all announced outside of the normal budgetary cycle. Yet, making major decisions without a full economic and fiscal forecast is seen by many as a gamble and perhaps a last roll of the dice by Prime Minister Truss to save the Conservatives at the next General Election.

MTD for ITSA Notices: HMRC’s Atomic Kitten

HMRC recently released the much-anticipated MTD for ITSA Notices, a document that TaxCalc has long been campaigning for and were promised early sight of six months ago – a promise that never quite came to fruition.

When first published back in July 2018, the clarity provided by the equivalent MTD for VAT Notice 700/22 was a welcome breath of fresh air, clarifying many outstanding points in relation to functional compatible software, digital links and the use of spreadsheets. It contained examples, diagrams and clear explanations of what was legislative, and hence came with the force of law, and what was HMRC guidance or recommendation. 

Spring Statement analysis

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, presented his Spring Statement to Parliament today, Wednesday 23 March 2022, and the tax experts at TaxCalc were on hand to analyse and disseminate the finer details.

The spreadsheet is dead, long live the spreadsheet

In 2015, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced the biggest change to the UK tax system since the introduction of Self Assessment, as he declared “the death of the annual tax return” accompanied by “a revolutionary simplification of tax”. Neither has yet to be delivered but, if you look past the headlines and rhetoric, HMRC’s Making Tax Digital programme is less about making tax digital and more about making bookkeeping digital.

New penalty regime: points mean prizes (for HMRC)

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has confirmed that their new points-based penalty regime will come into effect from 1 January 2023 and will apply to both Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT as well as MTD for Income Tax Self Assessment (ITSA). Their stated aim is to make penalties simple, fair and effective but, as the arguably illustrious ageing rocker, Meat Loaf, might say, “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad”.