Tax First November: News, events and change in tax

Our Tax First newsletter provides tax professionals with a round-up of the past month's major financial news and a calendar of useful diary dates.

We kick off this November edition of Tax First by looking at the recent UK Swiss tax agreement. The UK and Swiss governments reached an agreement last month which will affect all UK residents who’ve held money or investments in Swiss bank accounts or via other arrangements. We outline how, if you fall into this category, you may be liable to a one-off levy on your funds of between 19% and 34%. We also highlight some forthcoming changes to the foreign exchange regulations, with stricter reverse matching rules on the way and minor changes to the disregard regulations expected soon.

The European Court of Justice recently reached a decision in the Sauer Danfoss case. This decision will affect you if you’ve paid VAT that you think your supplier charged in breach of EU law. You may want to consider protecting your position if you’ve suffered irrecoverable VAT that shouldn’t have been incurred in various different circumstances. This month also sees the start of our next series of Indirect Tax Forums. We’ll be covering updates on VAT case law and developments in indirect tax disputes resolution – if you’d like to find out more, you can visit our website here.

Tax authorities approach the existence and treatment of permanent establishments (PEs) differently. Following recent proposals from The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) you may need to think about revising your existing practices around PEs. Our ICTA event on 24 November gives you an update on the PE rules, how they're changing and how different tax authorities are approaching PEs. You can register for the event here.

In a recent reward webcast we highlighted how, in the current tough economic times, the need to get the most from your expenditure on employees is more important than ever. We talked about different approaches to providing tax-efficient remuneration including the use of approved share plans, salary sacrifice and tax efficient benefits. You can watch a recording of the webcast here.

George Osborne, will deliver his autumn statement on Tuesday 29 November. We’re hoping he’ll set out further plans for growth and a sound template for economic recovery. Find out what happens on the day with our coverage.