HM Revenue & Customs has published fresh proposals to clamp down on dishonest tax agents.

The discussion document proposes compulsory access to the working papers of dishonest tax agents, even those in the possession of a third party, but only if sanctioned by the First Tier Tax Tribunal.  Civil penalties will also be available if there has been an illegitimate loss of tax.

The discussion document can be found here.

Interesting article on the debate surrounding the introduction of a specific tax relief for “games firms”.

The article refers to a report by Gartner Inc.  The report stated that it is likely that the games market will grow 10.4% between 2010 and this year.  Spending on video games should increase in coming years so that by 2015 worldwide spending will reach £69.9 billion.

Jim McGovern, Labour MP for Dundee West, is quoted as saying: “This report increases the pressure on the UK Government to start acting to support our computer games industry.  In the last month Ireland has announced it will introduce tax breaks and Pennsylvania became the 17th US state to do the same.”

The present UK coalition Government in its July 2010 emergency Budget decided not to introduce a tax relief for the games industry that the previous UK Government had planned to introduce.

The article from the Courier can be found here.

This is an issue that has been gaining an increasing amount of coverage over the last few years.

The House of Commons Treasury Committee are also looking at this issue.

The Chartered Institution of Taxation have published a report of a recent Treasury Committee hearing on this issue.  It seems that there is general agreement as to the existence of the “tax gap”.  There is as yet no agreement on how we go about measuring it or how to reduce it.

The CIOT report on this can be found here.

HMRC has published the latest list of registered Community Amateur Sports Clubs.  The list is available here.

CASC staus takes a bit of effort to achieve.  That said, the benefit can be thousands of pounds per year and is worth looking into.

There is an error on page 187.   The 5% Stamp Duty Land Tax rate rate does not apply to non-residential property.  CCH has confirmed that they have amended the on-line version and that the next edition of  this publication will also include this correction.

In his recent Budget, the UK Chancellor announced his decision to abolish 43 tax reliefs.  This followed the independent Office of Tax Simplification’s (OTS) March 2011 report reviewing the number and complexity of tax reliefs in the UK tax system.  The original report identified 1,042 reliefs.

HM Treasury are now seeking additional evidence on the impacts of removing 36 of these reliefs, and comments on the transitional arrangements that might help to minimise these impacts.   The consultation can be found on the HM Treasury website and closes on 31 August 2011.

89 inheritance tax reliefs were identified in the interim report.   The consultation recommends that a full review of inheritance tax is undertaken rather than a separate review of the reliefs identified.