Technology

Business | HMRC issues ethical Gen AI guidance for software developers

Software developers using generative AI must ensure tax products are designed with human oversight and only use reliable source data, warns HMRC, but critics say guidance is at least two years too late

29 Jan 2026

Tax | HMRC phonelines down for 2.5 hours before tax deadline

With just two weeks until the self assessment tax return deadline, high demand saw HMRC phonelines unavailable for over two hours on Thursday

16 Jan 2026

Tax | HMRC expands AI use for ‘nascent’ tax avoidance

Treasury minister confirms further use of AI at HMRC to ‘identify nascent issues’ including potential tax avoidance and evasion

12 Jan 2026

VAT

Tax | Amazon pays £1bn to UK taxman

US tech giant Amazon reported revenue of £29bn in the UK in 2024, paying a total tax bill of £1bn, up 7% on the previous year

7 Jan 2026

Tax | HMRC hires Moyo and Maverick Mother for TikTok ads

To ramp up its online presence, HMRC ties up with some big TikTok influencers to push the HMRC app

19 Dec 2025

Image for mid sized businesses fined ps16m corporation tax breaches

Tax | Mid-sized businesses fined £16m for corporation tax breaches

HMRC doubles corporation tax checks and issues £16m in fines to mid-sized businesses with R&D tax relief and transfer pricing major problem areas

11 Dec 2025

Tax | HMRC website hit by Amazon Web Services outage

Online services at HMRC were knocked out by global outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) for several hours on Monday morning, putting burden on phone lines

20 Oct 2025

Image for mtd trial numbers still low 2000

Tax | MTD trial numbers still low at 2,000

With six months to go until MTD for Income Tax is rolled out to 900,000 UK taxpayers, just over 2,000 people have filed a quarter 1 submission as part of HMRC beta trial

1 Oct 2025

Tax | 170k scams against taxpayers reported to HMRC

Scammers are ramping up their activity as HMRC warns of risk of dodgy tax refund offers and even threats of arrest for failure to pay a tax bill

20 Aug 2025

Tax | HMRC plans 90% digital only contact within five years

All UK taxpayers will be able to access their taxes easier than before as HMRC plans to improve digital tax accounts to end reliance on phonelines

21 Jul 2025

Tax | Marathon promoter wins ‘excessive’ £330k R&D dispute

A company organising placements for marathon runners and virtual runs took HMRC to the tribunal after being ordered to repay over £330,000 in R&D relief, and won

15 May 2025

Tax | HMRC systems are a ‘lumbering dinosaur’

MPs on the influential Treasury Committee criticise HMRC for failure to update legacy IT systems and no fixed plan for when the work will be completed, putting productivity and service levels at risk

2 May 2025

Tax | HMRC shifts to email and text to cut postage

In a bid to reduce costs and modernise the tax office, HMRC is going to start sending taxpayers texts and email updates, rather than so many letters

30 Apr 2025