Answer to Question 1
As per the information hosted on website of HM Revenue & Customs, they are UK’s customs and payment authority, and there vital purpose is collecting money paid for UK’s public services and helping individuals and families with financial support. This is done by adopting impartiality and enhancing effectiveness and efficiency of the administration. The major heads of administration are:
Treasury
The Department reports to the parliament through the treasury minister who looks upon their public spending. Strategic tax policy and development of that policy is responsibly held by Treasury. They ensure economy’s sustainable growth. The main responsibilities include:
Strategic Oversight of tax system in UK: This encompasses direct and indirect taxes and taxes related to property, personal, business and corporation (Sikka, Christensen, Christensen, et.al, 2016).
Public Spending: This includes spending of the department, public sector pension and pay, welfare policy and annually managed expenditure and capital investment.
Financial Services Policy: Including financial services and banking regulation, financial stability.
Director
Director is appointed by the Attorney General. They together with their appointed staff are known as Director of Revenue and Customs Prosecutions. They may conduct and institute criminal proceedings related to investigation. He is also eligible for providing advices in relation to criminal proceedings. They shall also determine whether institution is required for proceeding of an offence, discontinuance of proceeding, representations required in mode of trial and charges preferred.
Officers
Officers are appointed by the Commissioners whose directions they have to comply with. The functions conferred on officer of custom and excise, customs officer, excise officer, collector of customs and excise, person acting under Commissioner’s authority shall by enactment’s virtue vest with Officer of Revenue and Customs. There are different grades in officer; higher officer being police equivalent to Inspector and Chief Inspector, Officer equivalent to Sergeant and Senior Officer to Superintendent.
Committee
Executive committee is the main executive forum of the department and primary place for decision making of the Commissioners. It is responsible for setting and delivering of strategy and assurance of HMRC’s work (Gov.uk. 2017).
Board
The Board’s role is critical to HMRC’s success. It is in place to challenge and advice on HMRC’s management keeping focus on performance and strategic direction in future.
Answer to Question 2:
Commissioners may be appointed by Letters Patent for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) by the Queen. Commissioner’s Welsh Title shall be “Comisynwyr Cyllid a Thollau Ei Mawrhydi”. The Commissioner’s can resign by writing notice to the Treasury and hold office according to terms and condition of their appointment. The Commissioners shall act on Crown’s behalf in exercising of their functions. Service of the Commissioner shall be regarded as State’s Civil Service. They are assigned with responsibility to handle affairs of individual taxpayers impartially. They responsibility can be carved out in following: providing the department with their leadership, managing the resources effectively and efficiently and delivering the targets and objectives which are set by Chancellor of the Exchequer. HMRC is currently having five Commissioners namely Edward Troup, Jon Thompson, Jim Harra, Justin Holliday and Nick Lodge (Gov.uk 2017). The role of the Commissioner can be evaluated in the following manner:
Initial functions performed by the Commissioner
Responsibility shall bestow on the Commissioner for
Before the commencement of the Revenue and Customs Act 2005, the responsibility of collection as well as management of the revenue lied with Commissioners of Inland Revenue, however this responsibility is now of the Commissioner appointed under the Revenue and Customs Act. Similarly, the responsibility lied with Commissioners of Customs and Excise for management and collection of revenue is now entrusted with Revenue and Customs Commissioner. Revenue herein includes duties, taxes and contributions to national insurance (Legislation.gov.uk. 2017).
Before the commencement of the Revenue and Customs Act 2005, the responsibility of management and payment of tax credits lied with Commissioners of Inland Revenue, however this responsibility is now of the Commissioner appointed under the Revenue and Customs Act.
Commissioners shall appoint staff who shall be designated as officers of Revenue and Customs. These officers would comply with Commissioner’s direction whether he is exercising any function on the Commissioner’s behalf or exercising a function that has been conferred to the officer himself. Service in Commissioner’s employment shall be state’s civil service (Legislation.gov.uk. 2017).
Commissioners shall prepare arrangement for conducting their proceedings and proceedings of any of the committees which has been established by them. Arrangements in particular shall include making provision for meeting’s quorum and providing how commissioner’s function shall be exercised. However, arrangement decisions are required to be taken by exceeding half of commissioners who are holding office at that point of time (Legislation.gov.uk. 2017).
A charter must be prepared by the Commissioner which includes behavioral standards and values which will be aspired by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs while dealing with people in the event of exercising their functions. The charter must be regularly reviewed by the Commissioner and they can publish their versions if considered appropriate by them. A report must be prepared at least once a year reviewing demonstration of standard of values and behaviour which is included in the charter by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (Legislation.gov.uk, 2017).
The Commissioner shall be liable to provide with the direction of Treasury to the Comptroller and Auditor General, daily account relating to amount of received and disposed revenue. They shall also provide to the Comptroller account of satisfied liabilities by accepting property in tax satisfaction.
Powers related to Delegation
The act empowers Commissioners or number of Commissioners in accordance with arrangements by virtue of Section 12. However these powers shall not be delegable to ranks below that of a single commissioner, a committee set up by commissioners which may include people who are neither commissioners nor officers or commissioner’s staff. The functions that cannot be delegated are-
Making rules, regulations or passing order through statutory instruments
Approving application for search warrant to search premises
Approving application for warrant required to enter any premises.
In case of function delegated by the Commissioner or number of Commissioner to any person then they shall be monitoring how that person is exercising the functions and in event of exercising they shall adhere to the directions if any issued by the Commissioner or Commissioners. Also, in case of delegation nothing would prevent the Commissioner to exercise the function himself (Pope and Waters 2016).
The Commissioners has been given the power to use the information acquired in connection with some function in relation to any other function. This power has been given to them alongside officer of revenue and customs, committee set up by Commissioners, person acting on Commissioner’s behalf, member of committee and Commissioners of Inland Revenue and of Custom and Excise.
The Commissioners are given liberty to do anything which according to them is expedient and incidental and in connection with exercising of their functions.
This disclosure is made in accordance with instructions of Commissioner and on satisfaction that they are in public interest. The disclosures are made for detection and prevention of crime and in compliance of United Kingdom’s or Her Majesty Government’s obligation under an agreement international or other related to movement of goods, persons or services. These disclosures are applicable to those people who exercise public functions. Also disclosures can be made to person who exercise public functions relating to public health or safety. It includes disclosure relating to person arrested or suspected of an offence, investigation results or seizure of things made to Organization Police Information Technology (Legislation.gov.uk. 2017).
Information can be disclosed to prosecuting authority only after commissioner’s consent for enabling it in institution of criminal proceedings during investigation or on behalf of HMRC or giving advice connected to criminal proceedings or investigation.
The Commissioner can reward a person in return for services that relate to function of officer or Commissioners of Revenue and Customs (Legislation.gov.uk. 2017).
Commissioner’s other powers include authorization of officers of Revenue and Customs for arresting for committing an offence under the act and conducting civil proceedings.
Commissioners may be required to carry out inspections.
Commissioner shall also be conferred with all other functions of Commissioner of Inland Revenue and Commissioner of Customs and Excise before this act’s commencement.
Commissioners can charge fee for provision of valuation as done by the Officers of Revenue and Customs.
The principle of ultra vires is not only relevant to specific guidance that is given to individual tax payers. The House of Lords had set HMRC’s general management and discretion related to collection in the case of R v HMRC, ex parte Wilkinson which enables the commissioners to do policy formulation in interstices of tax legislations, pragmatically dealing with transitory or minor anomalies, cases in which it is difficult to formulate a statutory role or disproportionate time of parliament would be taken in case it is enacted or cases of hardship at margins (BBC News 2016).
Answer to Question 4:
The tax law of UK is applicable throughout UK which comprises of England, Wales, Scotland and North Ireland and not most of the smaller islands that are located around the British Coast. It also extends to oil platforms offshore in the British territorial waters The Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and The Channel Islands are not part of UK’s tax machinery. The tax laws are applicable to UK throughout however; in Scotland and to lesser extent in the Northern Ireland some provisions specifically recognize different legal systems (Deloitte 2017).
Taxation in UK involves payments to government’s three different levels being Central Government and devolved local and national governments. The various taxes levied are:
In layman terms, Income tax is the tax that is paid on income. The tax is not paid on all the types of income; however it is attracted by incomes sources like money earned from employment, profits from self employed business, some state benefits, most of the pensions like state and central, rental income, job benefits and trust income (Internations.org 2017). It is not paid on saving’s interest, dividend, national lottery or premium bonds. The Income tax allowances are available to most of the people in UK in the form of personal allowances and some tax reliefs are available which can reduce the tax payable (Jones 2016).
Corporation Tax is payable on the profits earned from business by limited companies, foreign companies having branch or office in UK and co-operative, unincorporated association or club. The Companies are required to get registered and maintain accounting records for the year, prepare and submit the return and pay taxes on same (KPMG 2017).
Individuals are required to pay taxes on their income. Income includes wages, benefits, pensions and savings interest (Devereux, Liu, and Loretz , 2014). The Income Tax is payable on income above personal allowances.
It is a tax imposed on the profits earned on disposal of asset that has increased in value. The tax is applied on the gains made and not on the money received. Disposal includes sale, gift, swapping, and getting compensated for it. However, Capital Gains tax is not applied on tax free assets (Monk 2016).
Inheritance tax is the tax that is applied on a dead person’s estate. The tax is not payable if the estate’s value doesn’t exceed 325,000 pounds or the estate is inherited by civil partner or spouse, community mature club for sports or charity. It is taxed @ 40%. The reliefs provided are taper relied and business relief (Rudgard 2017).
VAT can be charged only if the business is registered for Value Added Tax. The qualification for Vat and the rate chargeable depends upon the services or goods provided. VAT is not chargeable on exempted goods and goods outside UK VAT System’s scope. The rates are applied based on certain conditions being met like; provider or buyer, the place of providing, the manner of presentation for sale, nature of services or goods, maintenance of right records. However some essentials like food and drink for consumption of humans, animal feeding products and seeds and plants have been kept out of the tax arena (Smithers 2017).
References
BBC News. 2016. HMRC: Government names new bosses at tax authority – BBC News. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-35655736 [Accessed 11 Jul. 2017].
Deloitte 2017. Taxation and Investment in United Kingdom 2015. pp.9-27.
Devereux, M.P., Liu, L. and Loretz, S., 2014. The elasticity of corporate taxable income: New evidence from UK tax records. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6(2), pp.19-53.
Gov.uk. 2017. Our governance – HM Revenue & Customs – GOV.UK. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/about/our-governance#hmrc-commissioners [Accessed 8 Jul. 2017].
Internations.org. 2017. Income Tax in the UK. [online] Available at: https://www.internations.org/great-britain-expats/guide/16133-social-security-taxation/taxes-in-the-uk-16129/income-tax-in-the-uk-2 [Accessed 11 Jul. 2017].
Jones, R. 2016. As the tax year ends, four things you must do in the next 10 days. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/mar/26/tax-year-ends-new-allowances-rules-get-finances-in-order [Accessed 11 Jul. 2017].
KPMG. 2017. Income Tax. [online] Available at: https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/insights/2011/12/united-kingdom-income-tax.html [Accessed 11 Jul. 2017].
Legislation.gov.uk. 2017. Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005. [online] Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/11 [Accessed 8 Jul. 2017].
Monk, E. 2016. Capital gains tax: a guide to calculate how much will you pay. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tax/capital-gains/capital-gains-tax-how-much-will-you-pay/ [Accessed 11 Jul. 2017].
Pope, T. and Waters, T. 2016. A survey of the UK Tax System. Institute of Fiscal Studies.
Rudgard, O. 2017. Inheritance tax: what is the limit and how has it changed?. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tax/inheritance/inheritance-tax-what-is-the-limit-and-how-has-it-changed/ [Accessed 11 Jul. 2017].
Sikka, P., Christensen, M., Christensen, J., Cooper, C., Hadden, T., Hargreaves, D., Haslam, C., Ireland, P., Morgan, G., Parker, M. and Pearson, G., 2016. Reforming HMRC: Making it Fit for the Twenty-First Century-First Stage Report.
Smithers, R. 2017. VAT: what, how much and why?. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/may/29/vat-what-how-much-why [Accessed 11 Jul. 2017].
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download