Following consultation in early 2024, the government confirmed at the Budget this week that it will not go ahead with plans to regulate tax advisers and instead ‘will work in partnership with the sector to raise standards in the tax advice market’.

This will be a huge relief for the profession with many of the respondents to the consultation warning that the proposals would have imposed unacceptable costs on tax advisers, and could have ‘put substantial numbers of currently unaffiliated practitioners out of business, particularly those with small practices and those working part-time’.

Regulation of tax advisers was being pushed by the previous Conservative government, which consulted on the issue last March. The idea was first suggested in the mid 2010s by then chancellor George Osborne but again never got off the ground. Now the Labour government has spiked the proposal.