There are just over 70 days until Making Tax Digital (MTD) goes live in the UK. James Bunney looks at several other countries where digital reporting has been introduced in recent years

The Charity Commission has concluded a five-year investigation into The Cup Trust, a charity involved in a complex tax avoidance scheme worth £46m, having found ‘clear mismanagement and misconduct’ on the part of sole trustee Mountstar

A curse by a witch, being too short to reach the post box and cold fingers were among the more outlandish excuses given to HMRC for not completing a tax return on time, with expenses claims for family holidays and 55-inch TVs also being turned down

HMRC has extended the deadline for responses to its consultation on the taxation of trusts by a month, with feedback now welcomed up to 28 February

The UK has signed a new Israel tax agreement to update the double taxation convention (DTC) with the country, offering reduced dividend tax rates for inward investors

With less than 80 days to the rollout of Making Tax Digital for VAT, a number of professional institutes, inlcuding AAT, ACCA, ATT, CIOT and STEP, have released initial engagement letters defining client relationships under the new digital reporting framework

A case of disputed late filing penalties saw the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) uphold an appeal by an employee who claimed that HMRC should have known his address as they had previously been in correspondence with him

HMRC has lost a case involving the VAT status of a ‘raw chocolate brownie’ containing no egg, dairy or gluten but which a First Tier Tribunal (FTT) has ruled is a cake and not a chocolate bar, and should therefore be zero-rated, opening the way for manufacturer Pulsin’ to reclaim £300,000 in tax

The government should stop ‘index shopping’ when it calculates inflation, address known errors in the retail prices index (RPI) calculation, and move to a single general measure of inflation in the next five years in order to eliminate unfairness, a House of Lords select committee has advised

HMRC has updated its guidance on the use of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service, providing taxpayers with improved information over when and in what circumstances the service can be used

Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT, which goes live in April 2019, has left accountants confused and businesses struggling to keep up. James Bunney examines the current situation and what MTD means for the future of business tax

The European Commission has launched a debate to change the way that tax law is passed within the EU, suggesting abandoning the unanimous vote needed and relying instead on a majority in order to speed up the progress of tax legislation

Using its devolved powers for the first time, the National Assembly for Wales has agreed the proposed Welsh rates of income tax for 2019-20, which means there will be no change to overall income tax rates for taxpayers in Wales in the coming financial year

When HMRC over-reaches its powers, the courts do take action as happened in the recent long-running BPP [2018] TC 06632 case subject to an unless order barring the tax authority from tribunal proceedings. Stan Dencher, specialist tax writer at Croner-i, examines the case

The number of taxpayers missing the deadline for self assessment returns has fallen dramatically over the last three years reducing penalties issued by HMRC to £75m in 2018 as 10.7 million taxpayers submitted their return by 31 January deadline