The Audit Trail
Practical guidance on P11D, IR35, MTD, AML/KYC, and audit — written for accounting professionals.
Today around 864,000 sole traders and landlords file their first quarterly update, and research this week suggests a good number of businesses are incorporating partly to get out from under the new regime. A judgment released last Friday spent ten days examining why a different group of landlords incorporated, and the answer turned on a single definite article.
Read article →For as long as anyone can remember, August was the month a practice could switch off. That ends this year, because the first quarterly update under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax falls due on 7 August, right in the school holidays, and it is the first live HMRC checkpoint of the new regime. It quietly tests whether your practice runs on one person being at their desk, or on a routine that holds while they are away.
Read article →BlueCrest's traders ran nine figure books, took the big decisions daily, and everyone in the building listened when they spoke. On 1 July the Supreme Court said none of that matters, because influence over a firm only counts if the paperwork actually gives it to you. Nearly £200m rested on the answer, and it reaches every partnership in the country.
Read article →The Met Office issued a red extreme heat warning this week and parts of the country went past 39 degrees, so businesses that never owned a cooling system have spent the week buying one. Those invoices are a capital allowances decision dressed up as a summer expense, and the difference between getting it right and nearly right is full relief now or a deduction that dribbles out over twenty years.
Read article →A foreign exchange firm called it capital, five justices called it pay, and that gap between what a payment is named and what it is actually for is where most tax disputes really live. What HFFX decided on 17 June, and why the same question turns up on far smaller files.
Read article →From Tuesday, Companies House is emailing every registered company in the UK about the April 2028 filing changes. Most of the commentary has focused on the privacy opt-out. The more important story is what happens to the numbers after they are filed, and a Supreme Court case that reads as if it was written about 2028.
Read article →A year ago HMRC lost around £47 million to people logging into tax accounts that were not theirs. Multi-factor sign-in, and the end of quietly using a client's own login, are landing on agents this month. What changes, why the case law makes it more than IT housekeeping, and the two jobs worth doing before the end of June.
Read article →The substitution clause is the first thing most accountants reach for on an IR35 file. After Autoclenz, Atholl House and PGMOL, it is also the test where the case law has moved fastest. Four questions every PSC file should be answering in writing, before HMRC is the one asking them.
Read article →On Thursday I watched a webinar on AI leadership in regulated financial services, framed for insurance but with the same questions about to land in UK accountancy. A few of the lines from the panel stayed with me, and what they mean for accountancy practices buying AI tools right now.
Read article →I went to Accountex expecting to find the accounting profession deep in AI strategy. What I actually found was a profession still working out what AI means for it — and a set of foundational questions most firms have not yet answered.
Read article →Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is mandatory from April 2026 for clients with gross income above £50,000. Here is how to identify which clients are in scope, what they need to do, and what your practice needs to set up before the quarterly deadlines hit.
Read article →HMRC Connect 2.0 cross-references RTI, P11D, DVLA, and Companies House data automatically. Here is what triggers an investigation — and how accounting practices can get ahead of the 6 July deadline.
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