With the second Budget of the year slated for 8 July, the Conservatives will have the first stab at their own fiscal programme for nearly 20 years, their last solo Budget being Ken Clarke’s in 1997, so the Chancellor needs to make some ambitious decisions to ensure tax policy is progressive, says Sara White

HMRC is to spend £45m to improve customer service as a result of inconsistent call handling across call centres over the last 12 months with some months where over a third of calls only reach an engaged line and are not even added to the call queuing system 

Yvette Nunn, director of Berkeley Associates, considers the process for making claims for bad debt relief and recommends the best approach for reducing some of the current difficulties dealing with HMRC in light of the problematic Michiels case

An ACCA member who jointly owned a bookkeeping business with his wife has lost a First Tier Tribunal (FTT) appeal against a tax penalty for wrongly claiming group tax relief relating to the business and other companies they owned

Taxing debt will now be largely driven by the FRS 102 requirements for financial instruments, says Peter Rayney FCA CTA, who unpicks the tax implications of the new accounting framework and the impact on director's loan accounts and various loan relationships (LR)

Julie Butler FCA asks whether more farms could be lost due to lack of protection together with proprietary estoppel. The recent case of Davies & Another v Davies; [2014] EWCA Civ 568, shows the vulnerability of farms to legal claims by family members

HMRC has won the first stage of a tax avoidance case over the Ariel 1 avoidance scheme used by Abbey National Treasury Services PLC (ANTS) and Cater Allen International Ltd (CAIL) at the First Tier Tribunal  involving disputed tax of more than £16m after the courts ruled against its attempt to avoid paying corporation tax on the interest on floating loan rate notes 

Amazon has announced that since 1 May 2015, Amazon EU Sarl has been recording retail sales made to customers through branches in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy, rather than booking all the sales to its Luxembourg operation. Heather Self, CTA, partner at Pinsent Masons, considers the significance of this announcement