Not just another Budget briefing

We here at Trace are sure that you have seen many Budget briefings, both in the press and from a variety of professional organisations. 

These briefings tend to concentrate on the headline grabbing issues such as House Building, Welfare and Pensions, the NHS, Education, Personal Taxation and Stamp Duty Cuts.

Maybe not so relevant to you.

So we have highlighted a few sections below, which may not have been covered in other briefings, but we think will be of interest to many of you.

Property tax

3.30 Taxing gains made by non-residents on immovable property – To align the UK with other countries and remove an advantage which non-residents have over UK residents, all gains on non-resident disposals of UK property will be brought within the scope of UK tax. This will apply to gains accrued on or after April 2019. The government intends to include targeted exemptions for institutional investors such as pension funds.

Corporate tax

3.32 Changing how non-resident companies’ UK property income and certain gains are taxed – From April 2020, income that non-resident companies receive from UK property will be chargeable to corporation tax rather than income tax. Also from that date, gains that arise to non-resident companies on the disposal of UK property will be charged to corporation tax rather than CGT.

VAT

3.68 VAT fraud in labour provision in the construction sector – Following a consultation into options for tackling fraud in construction labour supply chains, the government will introduce a VAT domestic reverse charge to prevent VAT losses. This will shift responsibility for paying VAT along the supply chain to remove the opportunity for it to be stolen. Changes will have effect on and after 1 October 2019. The long lead-time reflects responses to the consultation and the government’s commitment to give businesses adequate time to prepare for the change.

Tax administration and compliance

3.83 Making Tax Digital (MTD) – As announced in July and legislated for in the Finance (No. 2) Act 2017, no business will be mandated to use MTD until April 2019. Only those with turnover above the VAT threshold will be mandated at that point, and then only for VAT obligations. The scope of MTD will not be widened before the system has been shown to work well, and not before April 2020 at the earliest. We are currently talking with HMRC for clarity on the detail and will keep our customers up to date with the detail and our plans.

Trace Solutions continue to actively monitor information published by a large number of Government and Professional Bodies so that we can engage with our clients at the earliest possible time to ensure that all our our property management software products continue to support current and future industry professional practice and compliance requirements.

To access the full HM Treasury Budget Report on online, following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/661480/autumn_budget_2017_web.pdf