Simon Sweetman's Blog

Simon Sweetman was an inspector of taxes for 18 years. He left the Inland Revenue in 1989 to join Chartered Accountants Scrutton Goodchild & Sanderson, later part of Scrutton Bland, where he was successively a senior manager and later a partner. He has been an independent consultant since 2001. He is a member of the tax policy unit of the Federation of Small Businesses and the small business working group of the Chartered Institute of Taxation. He is also on the tax law review committee of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and is currently chair of the Working Together group for the Suffolk and North Essex area.

Latest posts

Jun

09

Just because you’re paranoid…

2

HMRC has issued a document establishing the future relationship between the tax agent community and HMRC, explains Simon Sweetman.

Apr

08

Conference on tax simplification

2

Up betimes on 6 April (or indeed rather earlier than that) and off to a conference on tax simplification. What larks!

Mar

23

So what did the Budget do for SMEs & the OTS?

2

So what did the Budget do for small business, and what did it do for Tax Simplification?

The extension to Small Business Rate relief will help some; possibly Enterprise Zones will help others (though they don’t seem to have done much last time).

Mar

10

OTS interim report under the microscope

5

The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) has today produced its interim report of the taxation of small business (defined in this case as micro-businesses with up to ten employees): in other words 95% of UK businesses.

Dec

20

OTS overhauls tax reliefs

The OTS has published a review of tax reliefs and surprisingly, it’s written in plain English. Simon Sweetman assesses its findings.

Dec

06

Corporation tax: The not so beautiful game

2

What do the government’s proposed corporate tax reforms and England’s FIFA World Cup bid have in common? They’re both a recipe for disaster, according to Simon Sweetman.

Nov

19

Simplification or demolition squad?

2

Simon Sweetman reflects on his role on the small business advisory committee for the Office of Tax Simplification.

Aug

27

HMRC: Are we seeing what we want to see?

As all the world knows (well, that bit of the world that we belong to) Dave Hartnett has announced HMRC's plans to tone down its hardline stance on legal ac

Jun

18

HMRC's big seven

1

It's been a busy week for HMRC - Lesley Strathie was recognised in the Queen's birthday honours and details of the department's top earners were released.

Jun

14

Budget 2010 and the World Cup: Confused as ever

Simon Sweetman is confused by the forthcoming Budget, the World Cup and the coalition...

David Cameron recently promised: “We are going to do a novel thing in this government. We are going to plan properly, proper meetings, proper processes, proper Budgets.”

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