Spring 2016

Thsi quarter we look at 'New tax dangers when buying residential property' warns of the extra charges that may arise from April 2016 on certain property transactions. Supplementary rates of Stamp Duty Land Tax or Land and Buildings Transaction Tax may apply to some property purchases in the UK.

If you are an employer, we advise you to guide your employees in the right direction with a new tax break that may apply to them - the Marriage Allowance.

In December 2015, HMRC launched the Personal Tax Account (PTA). This is an early step in the long path the government has embarked upon in its Making Tax Digital project. A number of our clients have asked about PTAs and we answer some of your queries here.

The prospective reduction of interest relief on buy to let properties needs to be considered by landlords now even though the restrictions do not start to apply until April 2017. Our detailed article illustrates the potential problem areas.

If you are a director-shareholder of a company, the issue of how to tax efficiently extract profits from the company from 6 April 2017 may well get more expensive but there are ways to ameliorate the position. We examine some of the opportunities in the savings income regime.

There are a number of welcome changes being made to the taxation of benefits on employees and directors with effect from 6 April 2016. We highlight one of these changes - the 'trivial benefits' exemption.

You may have a website but do you track your website statistics? Google Analytics is a free and easy to use online service that allows you to access information about the visitors on your website.

Finally, we summarise some of the issues charities may need to consider to ensure valuable tax exemptions are available.

Please contact us if you have any questions regarding any of the articles we have included in our newsletter or if you would like further information on a topic we haven't covered. Your views are always important to us and we would welcome your feedback.