HMRC has published information on the use of unfunded pension arrangements which are set up in an attempt to avoid corporation tax, income tax and National Insurance (“NI”) contributions.

If you think you have put in place such an unfunded pension arrangement, or are considering setting up an unfunded pension arrangement in the future, you may find the information helpful in understanding the tax treatment that will be applied to that arrangement.Continue Reading Disguised remuneration: HMRC information on tax avoidance using unfunded pension arrangements

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK Government made the decision to delay the implementation of IR35 reforms to the private sector from April 2020 until April 2021 (see our previous blog post on this here). As a reminder, the IR35 reforms (commonly referred to as the “off-payroll working rules”) are intended to apply to any individual who, but for the supply of their services through an intermediary, would otherwise be an employee of the end-user client receiving the service. These rules will impact medium and large businesses in their role as the end-user client. From 6 April 2021, private sector businesses will become responsible for determining the employment status of contractors, regardless of whether they supply their services through a personal service company directly to the end-user or via an agency. The new rules will effectively see a shift in current responsibility on status determination, from the contractor to the end-user client. The changes will not apply to small businesses that engage contractors through an intermediary.
Continue Reading IR35 reforms update: Make sure you are ready for 6 April 2021

We now have a further updated Guidance Note from HMRC. On 30 April 2020, the Government produced some new guidance on the Furlough Scheme. Contrary to some of the previous guidance updates, these are broadly helpful in clarifying some areas of uncertainty.

We have written a short report on the changes, which is available from

This morning we have had the first report from HMRC on the operation of the Furlough Scheme. It is in the form of a tweet. It reports that 185,000 claims have been submitted covering 1,300,000 employees. So a lot of employees are benefitting from the Scheme. A lot of employers are, also doubtless, making