Making life easier for our clients

Tax doesn’t have to be taxing…

Well, that is what we were told by the Inland Revenue in a TV campaign around 20 years ago.  Sadly, it wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. Each year’s Finance Act adds hundreds of pages of new legislation, all to be navigated by the taxpayer.

The good news is we can take that burden away so that, for you, tax really doesn’t have to be taxing.

To show you what that means, let us tell you about two of our high net worth clients, Mr and Mrs X.

Mr X is UK domiciled but Mrs X has a non-UK domicile.  Following changes in the tax rules for non-UK domiciled individuals in April 2017, we reviewed the options available to Mrs X on becoming deemed UK domiciled.  This involved advising on the segregation of mixed funds and the rebasing of assets to the April 2017 values for Mrs X.  As part of this work, we explained to Mrs X the procedure for separating funds into their constituent parts and also liaised with Mrs X’s banks to ensure everything was done correctly.

Both Mr and Mrs X have extremely complex personal tax returns because they have a significant number of different types of investments covering many different tax jurisdictions. This means that there is a vast amount of information required each year to ensure that everything is correctly reported to HM Revenue & Customs. 

We manage all of this data, collating the information from various sources and presenting it in a useable format. And, as part of this work, we maintain comprehensive registers of assets in order to track sources, maintain share histories and capture detail in respect of historic stockpiled gains and remittances.

In this way, we make Mr and Mrs X’s lives easier, and we maintain regular communication with them about the information that we receive.  Mr and Mrs X may not want to do the grunt work but they do want to be kept informed.  We meet with them two or three times a year as well as having regular phone conversations and email exchanges.

We’ll also advise on specific transactions, predominantly regarding the tax issues associated with Mrs X’s domicile status, such as the remittance basis tax charge and whether stockpiled gains will revive, advising on the historic and current tax impacts of events that have taken place or are planned to do so. The case of Mr and Mrs X is a good demonstration of how we can deal with challenging tax returns, including complex technical tax issues.  By taking on the entire management of their personal tax affairs, we take the hassle away from the client whilst still keeping them fully informed.  We also look after Mr and Mrs X’s businesses, but that’s another story…