Taxpayers who have set up a personal tax account can now apply for an online refund of any overpaid tax and receive payment within three to five days, HMRC has announced

Changes to the taxation of salary sacrifice schemes favour employer imposition over employee choice although the government has ringfenced pensions so that for the time being they are protected, says Tim Stovold, head of tax at Kingston Smith

The government is committed to planned reforms to the way  non doms - individuals with a foreign domicile - are taxed in the UK and is consulting on updated proposals which include charging inheritance tax (IHT) on UK properties, and also a review of Business Interest Relief (BIR) rules to encourage greater investment into UK businesses post-Brexit

Yvette Nunn sees a trend towards aggressive tax cases as HMRC increasingly takes a hard line over minor infringements of tax rules, which oftentimes are down to trivial errors, with the recent cases of J & W Brown and Steady a prime example with trivial fines heading to court

Plans to release the long-awaited, revised tax advisers’ professional code - the Professional Conduct in Relation to Taxation (PCRT) - is likely to go ahead following the announcement of the government’s decision to fine accountants and tax advisers who push ‘aggressive’ tax schemes

HMRC has laid out the progress it expects to make in its major Making Tax Digital project which it hopes will overhaul and modernise the tax system, despite calls from some quarters for delays to certain aspects of the project

The US currently leads the medal table at the Rio Olympics, with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) also set to come out a winner, as the nation’s athletes are required to pay tax on any medal they earn, as well as on the financial bonuses paid for getting to the podium 

The line between giving straightforward advice and marketing tax avoidance must be more clearly defined for the government’s latest anti-avoidance measure to work, says John Cullinane, tax policy director of the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT)

The overhaul of the IR35 tax rules for self-employed contractors in the public sector cause concern for tax advisers and intermediaries alike, and will increase costs, warns Dave Chaplin, founder and CEO of ContractorCalculator

Financial institutions are reporting a number of challenges over compliance with new OECD requirements related to the automatic exchange of information (AEOI) on client bank accounts in foreign jurisdictions, exacerbated by problems complying with the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) requirements, according to Aberdeen Group

HMRC has released details of a short eight-week consultation on proposals for sanctions for accountants and tax advisers who design, market or facilitate the use of tax avoidance arrangements which are defeated by HMRC, and to change the way the existing penalty regime works for those whose tax returns are found to be inaccurate as a result of using such arrangements

The ‘simplification’ of reporting requirements for partnerships is proposed as part of the government’s Making Tax Digital policy, consultation documents reveal