As part of its open inquiry into the use of the retail price index (RPI) in assessing government debt repayments and indirect taxes, the economic affairs committee quizzed Chancellor Philip Hammond during a meeting

The Treasury has officially launched the government’s new ‘help to save’ savings account, intended to encourage rainy day savings for people with low incomes, which was due to be introduced in April 2018 but has been delayed

Salary sacrifice schemes, under which employees agree to a reduction in salary in exchange for certain benefits, may have VAT implications for the employer. Sarah Kay, tax writer at Croner-i, looks at whether VAT was owed on salary sacrifice schemes in the recent Pertemps case

Nearly three-quarters of Scots believe that the tax imposed by HMRC on Scotch Whisky should be at least as competitive as European taxes on flagship food and drink products, according to a poll commissioned by the Scotch Whisky Association

HMRC’s elite fraud team, the fraud investigation service (FIS), collected £5.47bn in extra tax last year, an increase of £300m (6%) from the previous year, according to analysis by Pinsent Masons which suggests tax authorities are taking advantage of wider powers to launch civil investigations

Tony Chamberlain, VAT adviser at Croner Taxwise explains the differences between recharges and disbursements when reclaiming expenses for consulting work via a VAT-registered business

The insurance premium tax (IPT) has delivered 19% more in tax revenues than was originally predicted, with revenues now close to £6bn, as businesses are taking out increasing amounts of insurance cover and the tax rate on policies has increased

The confusion surrounding the tax status of platform workers has led to the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) proposing significant changes to bring them their status into line with PAYE, says Lee Hamilton, partner at Blick Rothenberg

The government has announced that it is not going to proceed as planned with the abolition of Class 2 national insurance contributions (NICs), which was originally scheduled for April 2018, then delayed to April 2019

HMRC’s 13 regional centre locations were chosen using employees’ residential postcodes rather than on the basis of where they worked, the tax authority’s chief executive told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), with redundancies already exceeding the 10% previously estimated

HMRC has been criticised by MPs regarding the standards of data protection it maintained while collecting biometric data on customers for security purposes, a process that generated complaints from taxpayers, at a PAC hearing into HMRC performance

HMRC’s plans to introduce a new penalty regime for late payment of tax have been strongly criticised by the Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT), which says the proposals risk producing unfair outcomes for taxpayers who had agreed to pay tax liabilities by instalments