Changes for tax advisers on the horizon

Further plans announced to clamp down on tax fraud in the autumn Budget 2024

The Chancellor's announcement included:

  • All tax advisers to provide an Advanced Electronic Signature when making specified income tax repayment claims from 6 April 2025.
  • All tax advisers who interact with HMRC on behalf of clients must register with HMRC’s tax adviser registration service from April 2026. The government will legislate for this in a future Finance Bill.
  • The government is publishing a summary of responses to the ‘Raising standards in the tax advice market: strengthening the regulatory framework and improving registration’ consultation and is considering options to strengthen the regulatory framework of the tax advice market.
  • The government will publish a consultation in early 2025 on options to enhance HMRC’s powers and sanctions to take swifter and stronger action against tax advisers who facilitate non-compliance.
  • The government will publish a consultation in early 2025 to establish standards and increase the adoption of electronic invoicing.
  • To tackle the significant levels of tax avoidance and fraud in the umbrella company market, the government will make recruitment agencies responsible for accounting for PAYE on payments made to workers that are supplied via umbrella companies. Where there is no agency, this responsibility will fall to the end client business. This will take effect from April 2026.
  • the government will expand HMRC’s counter-fraud capability to address high value and high harm tax fraud.
  • the government will strengthen HMRC’s scheme for rewarding informants, to encourage reporting of high value tax fraud and avoidance.
  • The government will publish a consultation in early 2025 on a package of measures to tackle promoters of marketed tax avoidance.
  • The government is committed to tackling offshore non-compliance as part of the ambition to close the tax gap and is committing additional resources, including the scaling up of compliance activity to tackle serious offshore non-compliance including fraud by wealthy customers and intermediaries, corporates they control and other connected entities.