News

The application fee for lasting powers of attorney (LPAs) in England and Wales will increase from GBP82 to GBP92 from 17 November 2025, subject to parliamentary approval. The new fee is to ensure that income from LPA applications better meets the delivery cost, in line with HM Treasury’s Managing Public Money guidance. Disclaimer The information on...

HMRC now estimates that 42 per cent of the 7 million taxpayers in income self-assessment for the 2023/24 tax year will need to comply with Making Tax Digital (MTD) for income tax. Of these 2.9 million people, 864,000 will need to comply from April 2026, roughly 1 million from April 2027 and a further 975,000...

HMRC is writing to taxpayers who ceased to be UK-resident for a short period of time, urging them to ensure they have declared all of their income and gains on their return to the UK. Special rules apply to prevent individuals avoiding UK tax by leaving the UK for a period of five years or...

A will made by the late Sheila Carter in February 2015 in favour of her friend John Quinn was ‘procured by some form of pressure’ exerted by Quinn, the England and Wales High Court has ruled. Its conclusion was based on circumstantial evidence, including the deceased’s total dependence on Quinn; her ‘pathological anxiety and fear...

HMRC has lost its attempt to tax the pension of a retired employee who transferred his pension fund into a self-invested personal pension (SIPP) and then moved to Portugal, where withdrawals from the SIPP were tax-free under the country’s non-habitual resident exemption (Masters v HMRC, 2025 UKFTT 967 TC).   Disclaimer The information on this Blog is for...

Second ‘wife’ establishes claim against bigamist’s estate The England and Wales High Court is gradually disentangling the case of the late James Dinsdale, who died intestate in 2020 leaving a GBP1.8 million estate. He had a legal wife and a second wife whom he had bigamously married in America without divorcing the first. The second...

Fiduciary’s dishonest profits are held in trust for beneficiary, says UKSC Profit received by a trustee or other fiduciary resulting from breach of trust or fiduciary duty is held by the fiduciary in a true trust for the benefit of the beneficiary or principal, the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) has decided (Stevens v Hotel Portfolio II, 2025...

Suspended jail sentence for charity director who refused to disclose use of funds Westminster Magistrates Court has given a charity director a suspended ten-week prison sentence for failing to provide information to the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) contrary to the Counter-Terrorism (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. The UK government has already frozen all the...

Investors’ relief not available where business not ready to supply goods An enterprise investment scheme (EIS) relief claim made by a group of six companies has failed at the First-tier Tax Tribunal (FTT) because the companies concerned had not commenced qualifying trades inside the two-year deadline. The FTT’s criterion for commencement was ‘when the business...

The so-called ‘digital challenger bank’ Monzo, which offers personal current accounts through smartphone apps without using a branch network, has been fined GBP21 million for having inadequate anti-financial crime systems and anti-money laundering controls between October 2018 and August 2020. The bank’s customer base had substantially The number of increased during the period, and it...