Oxfam estimates that some £18.5tn is being held for individuals in tax havens, claiming that tax evasion is costing EU states around £0.85tn a year. Moreover, around a third of this cash is being held in British Overseas Territories and crown dependencies.

Oxfam’s Head of Development Finance and Public Services, Emma Seery, said that the figures put the UK at the centre of a global tax system that is “a colossal betrayal of people here and in the poorest countries.”

Ms Seery added that now is the time for the Government to put its tough talking into action, otherwise its stance on tax threatens to make a mockery of the UK’s hosting of the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland next month.

However, a Treasury spokesman refuted Oxfam’s claims and said that the Government strongly supports tax capacity building in developing countries and that the Prime Minister wrote to the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies only this week asking for more transparency in their financial dealings.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that HMRC could soon be allowed to gain access to the overseas bank accounts of all British citizens to check they are not hiding money from the tax office, under an EU-wide agreement which Mr Cameron is proposing.

The think tank argued that business rates are costing the retail industry more than £7bn a year and increased by £175m in April, which coupled with consumers turning to online shopping is leaving one in eight shops empty.

Recent figures show that shop vacancies have surged to a new high of 11.9 per cent, as high-profile retail failures knock holes in shopping centres.

Meanwhile, high streets have been “vastly outperforming” shopping centres and out-of-town retail parks, boosted by a 5 per cent increase in evening drinkers, diners and clubbers.

Adding to the calls for change, Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk has accused the Government of using retail business rates as a “cash cow to milk to exhaustion” and led a debate on Monday (May 20th) to look into the Government’s response to the high street’s plight, saying that business rates are “past their sell-by date”.

The debate followed the first evidence session at the Inquiry into the UK Retail Sector, where British Retail Consortium Director General Helen Dickinson gave evidence and said that business rates are now a key factor when calculating whether a new store opening is financially viable.

Ms Dickinson added that business rates may need to be fully reformed, agreeing with other campaigners that the business rates calculation should switch to being based on the consumer prices index (CPI) rather than September’s retail prices index (RPI), as it is currently

Mr Danczuk also called on the Government to appoint a permanent minister for the high street to show a ‘clear, strong leadership” from it on the issue and accused the Government’s shops tsar Mary Portas of turning the high street crisis into a reality TV show.

John Kinsella, specialises in providing tax advice to a range of businesses and individuals.

Dr Cable added that while SMEs report difficulty in accessing funding, the banks say that there is no appetite for loans, creating a “disconnect” between the two, particularly outside London.

Singling out two banks, the Business Secretary said that they need to take more responsibility for the economic recovery by helping firms to grow, although he added that one is “trying a bit harder than the other”.
Meanwhile, the CBI launched an alternative guide at the conference, called Ripe for the Picking. In the guide, the organisation points out that although the banks are the source of nearly 80 per cent of all credit to growing businesses, SMEs need to open their eyes to the broad range of other funding options on offer.

Chief Policy Director at the CBI, Katja Hall, said that it is critical for SMEs to access the capital they need because they form the backbone of the economy. However, there are other avenues for them to go down, such as corporate venturing or to issue retail bonds.

Dr Cable said that the CBI’s guide will help to raise awareness of the different types of finance available and how alternative credit channels can introduce more competition to give SMEs more choice.

He added that the Government wants to see more non-bank lending and will be deploying £300m of the £1bn allocated to the initiative to invest alongside the private sector in new entrants to finance and the growth of smaller lenders.

Bradford Accountant Ian Gill offers a range of accounting and tax advice to owner-managed businesses, sole traders and individuals.

The fall was driven by lower fuel costs and airfares, with petrol and diesel prices falling by 2.1p and 3.9p a litre respectively although the cost of food rose after damage to crops over the unseasonably cold winter.

In fact, food prices have risen by 40 per cent since the start of the financial crisis and the recent extended period of cold weather has damaged yields, putting even more pressure on the price of fruit and vegetables.

The fall will therefore help consumers and also gives the Bank of England more room to manoeuvre on monetary policy, although the Bank is predicting that inflation will rise again over the summer, partly because the period of falling fuel prices will come to an end.

Chief Economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, David Kern, welcomed the news, saying that the drop in inflation will ease the pressures facing businesses and consumers.

He added that, although there are still risks that inflation may edge up in the next few months, it is unlikely that the country will see an increase to 3 per cent, or even higher, as previously feared.

It is the Chambers’ view that the economy needs a period of falling inflation so that domestic demand can stabilise as exporters are hampered by global challenges, particularly in the Eurozone.

However, the impact of the news saw the pound fall from $1.5212 to $1.5184, while the Euro rose from 84.58p to 84.67p.

Last year the department published its IR35 business entity test, which indicates to participants how likely they are to face being selected for an IR35 investigation.

This year, Dave Chaplin, founder of contracting site “ContractorCalculator”, has asked the taxman a number of questions to see whether the new measures brought in as a result of the entity test had made a positive difference to the way IR35 is being administered.

However, the department has declined to make the information public, citing section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act, although it says it will publish updated IR35 enquiry data “in its own time”, which Mr Chaplin says he finds “unacceptable”.

The questions posed by Mr Chaplin include how many taxpayers or service companies have been sent IR35 enquiry letters over the last tax year and how many of these have been ignored or not acted upon by recipients.

Mr Chaplin also asked how many enquiries have been closed because the taxpayer or service company was deemed to be outside IR35 or because the targets accepted that they were inside IR35 and made the appropriate payments.

Also, in bid to find out whether the taxman’s activities are yielding a good return on investment, Mr Chaplin asked how many enquiries are still active, how many demands for extra tax payment have been issued and how much in additional tax and National Insurance Contributions has been accrued throughout the enquiry.

Susan Sedgwick is a Bradford accountant who specialises in personal and corporate tax; along with VAT issues.

Mr Cameron wrote to 10 crown dependencies and overseas territories, such as Bermuda, Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands, Jersey and the Isle of Man, all of which operate low-tax regimes, saying that while he backs their right to be low tax jurisdictions, the rules need to be set and enforced.

The Prime Minister is to push for an agreement on clamping down on tax evasion and avoidance at the G8 summit and has said that he wants the group of countries to “knock down the walls of company secrecy”.

In his letter Mr Cameron said that this is the critical moment for the overseas territories and crown dependencies, some of which have been described by the Government as having “complex tax arrangements”, to continue to work in partnership with the UK in taking the lead on tax information exchange and beneficial ownership.

Because they operate low tax regimes and have lighter regulations, many of these territories have become very attractive to international businesses, but the lack of transparency in their tax dealings has led to suspicions that they are being used to evade tax.

Mr Cameron welcomed commitments by the territories to exchange tax information but said that its quality and accuracy needs to be improved to find out who “really owns and controls each and every company”.

He has asked the territories to sign international protocols designed to allow tax information to be shared more easily between countries and to provide fully resourced and properly managed centralised registries that are feely available to law enforcement and tax collectors.

Having recalculated earnings in its annual PAYE End of Year Reconciliation process for 2012-13, the department has now begun the laborious task of contacting the people who either under or over paid. However, as there are so many people to speak to, some taxpayers will not find out whether they are due a refund or have to fork out more money until October.

Of the 5.5 million people, some three and a half million are due a refund of between £350 and £500, while the balance will be asked to make up an average shortfall of between £400 and £500, although the taxman has said he is happy to wait until the 2014-15 tax year for it to be repaid.

A spokesperson for HMRC said that around 85 per cent of PAYE taxpayers pay the right amount of tax throughout the year but if their circumstances change during the 12 months, such as if they move jobs, then a recalculation has to be made.

He added that this is the normal process that the PAYE system has used since it was set up some 70 years ago. Of course, the hope is that with the introduction of reporting payroll information in real time, commonly called RTI, which started for most employers this April, these recalculations should be a thing of the past. It could be interesting to see whether the taxman needs to get in touch this time next year.

Although not all firms in the UK have to have an audit since the thresholds were changed last year, it is still advisable to do so for the vast majority, as it shows whether the organisation is carrying out its business to a recognised standard and is reporting the profit, loss and governance according to universally accepted principles.

All audit professionals operate under UK generally accepted accounting principles (UK GAAP), which means that any firm undergoing an audit is going to have a report which means something in a financial sense to anyone who reads it.

As the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) points out, it is vital that the UK economy has efficient and effective capital markets and that there is confidence in the corporate framework through greater transparency.

Since the UK’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make up 95 per cent of UK business, it is therefore vital for small firms to have audits.

Having a business assessed to accepted standards gives peace of mind to management, investors, shareholders and any other stakeholder, as an unqualified audit means that, as far as the auditor can see, the business is doing what it says it is doing and showing correct figures.

It also means that the business is operating to an accepted standard as far as governance is concerned, for example getting tax returns in on time and running up-to-date ledgers.

In other words, having an audit gives a firm a financial and universally accepted benchmark, against which it can be judged.

As an accountant in Bradford, Mark Wilcock specialises in offering accounting and audit advice.

As the IHT threshold is only £325,000 now, increasing to £329,000 in 2015/15, more and more people are affected by the tax and those who fail to plan could leave their loved ones with a hefty bill to pay before they can inherit.

The tax is currently levied at 40 per cent on anything over the threshold, but people could start to mitigate this amount now in a number of ways, such as giving a cash gift of £3,000 in any tax year, which will be exempt from IHT as long as the donor lives for seven years after the gift was given. In addition, the amount of tax goes down to 36 per cent if at least 10 per cent of the estate is left to a charity.

There are also different rules for spouses or registered civil partners. For example, any assets left to them are exempt from IHT as long as they live in the UK. In addition, an individual’s partner’s Inheritance Tax allowance is increased by the amount the individual did not leave to others, meaning that, together, a couple can currently leave £650,000 tax-free.

Also, gifts of no more than £250 to any one recipient per tax year are excluded from the tax and not counted towards the annual gift exemption, so gifts to friends and relatives of £250 each all ‘dilute the pot’ that can be taxed.

Chris Padgett, specialises in providing financial planning advice to a range of businesses and individuals.

The booklets should have been sent out no later than April 12 but a number of deliveries were still not done by April 30, meaning that, with an estimated three-week time lag for getting to employers, some will not have any by Saturday.

The department has said that it will accept a cheque without an accompanying payslip as long as it is made payable to HM Revenue & Customs and includes an accounts office reference.

The taxman will also accept an electronic payment through BillPay, BACS or online banking but, again, there must be an accounts office reference number included.

The reporting of PAYE information to HMRC in real time, usually abbreviated to RTI, began on April 6 this year for most firms, except the smallest, and the Full Payment Summary (FPS) must be sent in on a firm’s first payday that falls on or after that date. Thereafter, an FPS should be sent in every time a firm pays its employees, either on or before the time they are paid.

However, if a firm has not paid any employees in a tax month and has no FPS to send in, it must send an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) by the 19th of the month, on which the employers must tick the “no payment due as no employees paid in the pay period” box.

As an accountant in Bradford, Stephen Tomlinson specialises in offering PAYE, Tax and VAT advice.