At last!  VAT, that great pan-European tax, is coming of age.

If you are a VAT-registered business the principle has always been that input VAT you suffer should be recoverable, regardless of where it's incurred.  But most businesses have found the process of reclaiming VAT suffered outside the territory in which they're registered an absolute nightmare.  For a UK-registered trader to recover VAT from Italy, or Germany...

Those of us in the private sector often look on jealously at the generous final salary pensions of our civil servant cousins, but will the proposed withdrawal of the higher rate pension relief from April 2011 leave high earning civil servants with a bit of a nasty shock in the form of a tax bill for the higher rate relief claw backs on their pension funds. I’m no actuary, but the value of a personal pension fund would need to be in the region of...

The reversion to old-style “hit the rich” Labour politics isn’t quite what it seems.  Not only has Brown achieved his goal of taking more than 50% of the earnings of high earners, he’s also taken steps to ensure that anyone in the private sector is prevented from building up the level of pension enjoyed by Brown and his cronies in the public sector.

Brown will never be elected Prime Minister, but that won’t stop him drawing a pensi...

Last November, following the PreBudget Report, my blog post comprised a barely-disguised critique of Darling's extraordinary capacity for creating mayhem with the personal tax system.  The PBR proposed the introduction of a form of non-progressive taxation, whereby the highest rates of marginal tax wouldn't fall on the highest band of income. Including NI contributions, I counted nine different tax bands, with the highest applying...

HM Revenue & Customs are pressing ahead with the drive to require all businesses to file returns online.

From April 2010, all VAT-registered businesses with an annual turnover of £100,000 or more and all newly registered businesses, regardless of the level of their turnover,  will be required to file their VAT returns online and will have to make their VAT payments electronically.  Businesses with a turnover of less...