Some 400,000 partnerships will report their tax positions and obligations through a nominated partner under HMRC’s Making Tax Digital project, draft legislation shows, although the largest partnerships with income over £10m are likely to be exempted

HMRC has confirmed the timetable for the rollout of quarterly reporting and a year end reconciliation under Making Tax Digital with the first tranche of taxpayers, including buy-to-let landlords and the self employed, set to kick in from April 2018 

The cash basis threshold has been set at £150,000 to allow more buy-to-let landlords to benefit from being taxed on the cash basis set out in draft legislation released as part of HMRC’s Making Tax Digital plans

HMRC has published guidance on a new measure which allows intermediaries that collect donations for charities to get authority from a donor to gift aid all their donations in a year, designed to make the process simpler for donors using digital platforms or text messages to give to multiple charities under a single declaration

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Deutsche Bank a record £163m for serious failings in its anti-money laundering (AML) controls over a so-called ‘mirror trading’ scheme between its London, New York and Moscow offices which shifted $10bn from Russia to offshore bank accounts in a manner highly suggestive of financial crime

Unchecked by strong regulation and government, ignorance and greed can become widespread while questionable and opaque accounting rules obfuscate the quality of reporting and auditors miss key issues, warns Emile Woolf FCA

The overhaul of the tax reporting system under Making Tax Digital will see the abolition of the VAT return for certain businesses from 2019, including VAT-registered self employed and landlords

The transition to Making Tax Digital (MTD) is likely to cost businesses, landlords and the self employed around £500m in the year of rollout (2018-19), with the first year of quarterly reporting likely to cost each business £280 on average 

Taxpayers interested in opting for a voluntary pay as you go (PAYG) approach as part of Making Tax Digital plans, allowing them to make payments at a point of their choosing towards an expected tax liability, are calling for HMRC to ensure the repayments are handled quickly and with ease

The OECD is seeking taxpayer input on the tax treaty dispute resolution process in a second tranche of countries and is seeking comments on the mutual agreement procedure (MAP) in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Sweden

The European Commission’s plans for changes to the financial regulation, which governs the operation of the EU budget, should be simplified further according to a new opinion published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA), which claims there is a risk of providing too much repetitive information

Aspiring finance leaders need to go beyond traditional number crunching and develop new skills if they want to take on the chief financial officer (CFO) role in the future, according to an EY global survey of 769 finance chiefs

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is to publish guidance to help large businesses report on how quickly they pay their suppliers, ahead of measures coming into force in April 2017 to boost transparency of payment practices to help small and medium sized businesses (SMEs)

Download the HMRC CGT indexation allowance for October 2016, RPI Index for December 2016 and HMRC rates of interest, changes to stamp duty land tax (SDLT) and land and buildings transaction tax (LBTT) rates, and more

The key HMRC filing deadlines from February to August 2017 including PAYE settlement agreement, PAYE cheque payments, employee share schemes

A roundup of current consultations from HMRC, including Apprenticeship Levy, VAT grouping, offshore tax evasion, reducing money purchase annual allowance for pensions

More than 275,000 companies were showing signs of ‘significant’ financial distress at the close of 2016, representing the thirteenth consecutive quarter that corporate stress has risen on a year on year basis, according research from Begbies Traynor