If you cannot pay your tax bill, it’s crucial to contact HMRC as soon as possible. They may offer support through a Time to Pay arrangement, allowing you to repay your debt in instalments based on your financial situation. Ignoring the debt can lead to enforcement action, including visits to your home or business by HMRC or the use of debt collection agencies. The debt collection agencies are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and will only contact you by letter, phone, or SMS. They will not visit you in person at your home or place of work.

If these measures to do not work, HMRC can recover the debt using more serious measures. These include taking control of your possessions, recovering money directly from your bank account, adjusting your tax code or using court action. HMRC may also pursue debt through charging orders, deductions from wages or pensions or third-party debt orders.

If all else fails, insolvency proceedings may be started, including bankruptcy or winding-up orders. HMRC also has international recovery agreements that allow foreign tax authorities to collect UK tax debts if you live or have assets abroad.

If you are affected by any of these issues, please let us know so we can help you.

The Money Purchase Annual Allowance (MPAA) is a pension rule designed to prevent individuals from gaining double tax relief on pension contributions. It targets situations where someone withdraws money from their defined contribution pension pot and then reinvests it, effectively receiving tax relief on the same funds twice.

The normal annual pension contribution limit is currently £60,000. However, once the MPAA is triggered the pension contribution limit is significantly reduced to the MPAA cap of £10,000 per year.

The MPAA is triggered when you start accessing your pension flexibly, such as by:

• Withdrawing your entire pot as a lump sum (in full or in part).
• Moving into flexi-access drawdown and taking income.
• Buying a flexible annuity.
• Exceeding withdrawal limits under a capped drawdown plan.

It does not usually apply if you:

• Only withdraw up to a 25% tax-free lump sum allowance.
• Buy a lifetime annuity.
• Cash in a small pension pot of less than £10,000.

If applicable, the reduced pension allowance can affect future retirement planning and needs to be considered before making any pension withdrawals.

Under the Companies Act 2006, dividends can only be paid from realised profits, never from capital, no matter what a company’s Articles of Association say.

Dividends can only be paid by a company out of profits available for distribution, not from capital, even if the company’s Articles of Association suggest otherwise. This rule is established under Companies Act 2006, section 830, and forms a key legal restriction on dividend payments.

Profits available for distribution are defined as a company’s accumulated, realised profits (from both revenue and capital), not previously distributed or capitalised, minus its accumulated, realised losses, provided these losses haven’t already been written off through a formal reduction or reorganisation of capital.

HMRC’s internal manuals go further and state that the Act lays down what may be termed the ‘balance sheet surplus’ method of determining profits available for distribution. Under this, a company can distribute the net profit on both capital and revenue at the particular time, as shown by the relevant accounts.

Additional rules apply to certain types of companies including investment and public companies.

If a call from your bank feels suspicious, just hang up and dial 159 to be connected safely to your bank’s fraud team.

The 159 helpline was launched in September 2021. The helpline is designed to help consumers quickly and safely reconnect with their bank when they receive a suspicious or unexpected call about a financial matter. 159 now works for over 99% of UK retail bank customers, providing an extra layer of protection against phone scams.

If you receive a call that feels off, hang up and dial 159. This short code cannot be spoofed or imitated, unlike many regular phone numbers. It connects you directly to your bank’s fraud team, helping you verify the legitimacy of any request before acting.

The memorable number, with the digits forming a diagonal on the keypad "159", has already been used over 800,000 times since its launch. It works with most major UK banks, including Bank of Scotland, Barclays, First Direct, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Monzo, Starling and Virgin Money.

There are ongoing plans to expand and enhance the service including a proposal for having Ofcom designate 159 as a mandatory “Type A” number, like 999 or 111.

If you receive a call purporting to be from your bank that is concerning, calling 159 is a fast, secure way to protect yourself and your finances.

The question was raised as to whether, in a tripartite agency relationship, an employment relationship exists between an employee and their intermediary agency. For instance, Ryanair DAC employs some pilots directly, while subcontracting others. A Mr. Lutz successfully applied to an advertisement for pilots and was contracted on 10 August 2017 by MCG Aviation Ltd. (now Storm Global Ltd.). From July 2018 to January 2020, Mr. Lutz served as a Ryanair-contracted pilot based at Stansted, nominally supplying his services through his own Irish company, Dishford Port Ltd., although it is now accepted that his direct relationship was with MCG. 

Following an incident with Ryanair management on 13 January 2020, MCG terminated its contract with Dishford, effectively ending Mr. Lutz's services. He then brought two claims to tribunal with the support of the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) concerning annual leave against MCG under the Civil Aviation (Working Time) Regulations (CAWTR) 2004, and also an equal terms claim against both MCG and Ryanair. Through this action, Mr. Lutz was seeking compensation for not being afforded the same working conditions as employed pilots under the Agency Workers Regulations (AWR) 2010. 

The tribunal found in Mr. Lutz's favour, holding that he was a "crew member" employed by MCG under CAWTR and also an "agency worker" under AWR. Subsequent appeals by Ryanair and MCG were dismissed as, where a worker is supplied by an agency (B) to a principal (C), but has an explicit contract with the agency, the agency remains the employer. Mr. Lutz's services to Ryanair were thus explicitly governed by his contract with MCG, which expressly stated that he was not employed by Ryanair. The fact that Ryanair exercised exclusive direction and control over Mr. Lutz's work does not necessarily create an implied employment contract or relationship with Ryanair, although it befell MCG to ensure that Ryanair respected the relevant employment laws. Moreover, even though Mr. Lutz had a fixed-term contract for several years, it was nonetheless "temporary", thereby creating a gap in protection for agency workers and introducing ‘unacceptable uncertainty’. 

This case reinforces the "substance over form" approach in determining employment status, in that employers can no longer solely rely on contractual labels such as "independent consultant" or "self-employed" as a pretext to deny workers their employment rights, especially in such tripartite agency arrangements. Thus, agencies should understand that workers employed for extended fixed terms are likely still covered by the AWR and thereby entitled to the same T&Cs as direct employees after 12 weeks. Hence, agencies still have clear responsibilities for certain statutory rights, and businesses relying on "supply chain layering" to outsource labour will need to review their structures.