Blog

Conservative John Stevenson, a solicitor, opened a debate on stamp duty by saying the key issue in housing policy is to get the mix between property ownership, the private rented sector and social housing right. He wants to see a national housing framework with a more flexible local policy.

Report on Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill second reading debate in the House of Commons on Monday 8 January 2018.

A live blog of the third and fourth public bill committee sitting of Finance (No.2) Bill 2017-19, which took place on Thursday 11 January at 11.30am and 2pm. Issues debated included taxation of partnerships, R&D credits and other corporation tax matters, chargeable gains and capital allowances. Clause 18-29 were passed.

CIOT hosted a speech and roundtable discussion with HMRC Chair Edward Troup and a small group of senior representatives from the tax profession on Monday last week. Mr Troup was speaking ahead of his retirement from HMRC at the end of this month. At the event he talked about how he saw HMRC and the tax profession developing in the future, including his belief that government was likely to be tempted to put further responsibilities on tax advisers in the future. Most eye-catchingly he thought one possible direction was segmentation of tax agents, categorising them with different levels of ‘risk rating’, with their clients being scrutinised accordingly.