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For a person who has no need of the income from a family company, a dividend waiver, which allows other shareholders to receive dividends but not the person who has executed the waiver, can be a useful device. However, the use of dividend waivers can...

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have recently carried out research on the 'sharing economy' – by which people share skills, resources, time or property with one another without cash changing hands. There are a number of websites that facilitate such...

Failing to pay taxes due because of insufficiency of funds with which to do so has repeatedly been challenged by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) when a defaulting taxpayer has sought to claim it is a 'reasonable excuse' for non-payment. Where such an excuse...

When managing taxes, there can be few errors as expensive as failing to register for VAT if you should have done so, as a recent case shows. One area of potential confusion is when there is an agency involved which arranges for someone to provide services or...

In an interesting VAT case, the well-known tennis club Queen's Club has been successful in a claim for recovery of the VAT it incurred on revamping its restaurant and bar facilities. The club gives access to tennis, squash, real tennis and rackets for its...

To what extent are the costs of professional advice given to a director tax deductible by the company that he or she serves? A tribunal tackled that thorny issue in a case of importance to company directors and their tax advisers. A director of a computer...

The increasing aggressiveness of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in dealing with taxpayers was recently given short shrift by the First-tier Tribunal (FTT), which criticised HMRC's high-handedness and ordered them to make a payment to the taxpayer concerned....

Virtually all leases have clauses which stipulate that when the lease comes to an end, the tenant must leave the premises in the same condition as they were in when they entered them, and the negotiations over the termination of a lease will often involve a...

The United Kingdom has very favourable Inheritance Tax (IHT) treatment for the owners of business assets used in a trade and, in general, the value of these will be outside the charge to IHT on death provided certain criteria are met. The IHT relief...

Tax law allows trading losses to be relieved against other income in a variety of ways, and although there is complexity in that law, the principle that 'losses can be offset against other income' is often considered to be axiomatic. However, as a recent...