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Lowdown
Lowdown

9am Lowdown: Election tax plans, church fraud and Accountex

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10th May 2017
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Good morning everyone, and welcome to the lowdown.

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Corbyn reveals corporation tax rise plans

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will today announce plans to increase corporation tax by nearly a third if he wins the general election.

Under coalition and Conservative governments the corporation tax rate has fallen to 19% and is due to drop to 17% over the next three years, but according to the Telegraph Corbyn will increase rates to 26% by 2020.

He will use the money raised from the tax rise for policies including restoring student grants, reducing class sizes and providing free school meals for all primary school children.

Commenting on the plans chief secretary to the treasury David Gauke said: “He’s spent this damaging tax rise on businesses on 12 different things and he’s already dropped numerous things he’s said he’d do before.”

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Jail for church finance officer

An accountant who defrauded a Belfast church of more than £78,000 has been jailed for 10 months, but was praised by a judge for giving the “fullest and frankest” of admissions to police.

The Belfast Telegraph reports that David Goodwin, former financial officer of the Christian Fellowship Church, used his charm to con and deceive church members over a period of two years, and as a result of his fraud a number of church staff were made redundant.

However, Goodwin had what judge Judge Geoffrey Miller QC described as a “road to Damascus conversion” and confessed what he had done to police. According to his lawyer talks by a one-time criminal about how he found God struck a chord with Goodwin, who detailed the frauds on his computer and walked into a police station with his laptop under his arm and said: 'Look what I have done'.

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Accountex kicks off

The world’s largest gathering of accounting professionals opens at 10am today at the ExCeL Centre in London.

Speakers include AccountingWEB’s very own John Stokdyk, who will be giving attendees the lowdown on the website’s practice excellence programme at 1pm on Thursday, and business editor Tom Herbert, who will be joined on Thursday at 2pm by Richard Sergeant for a session on helping clients access alternative finance.

You can keep up with the site’s Accountex coverage on the homepage or via the Accountex tag.

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