News round up

Important October tax dates

There are two key tax dates in October:

• 5 October is the deadline for registering with HMRC for self assessment and a 2024/25 tax return, if you have not registered before. You can check on you.gov whether you need to register.
• 31 October is the final date for filing a paper self-assessment return for 2024/25. If you file online, you have another three months’ leeway.

Company cars return

New HMRC data shows that company car ownership is on the rise after declining by a quarter in the second half of the 2010s. The increase has been driven by electric vehicles (EVs), which now account for 41% of the company car population. The tax advantages of salary sacrifice for EVs have played a major part. However, the government is tripling EVs’ taxable benefit over the next four years.

Counting billionaires?

Lord Kinnock, the former Labour Party leader, revived talk of a wealth tax over the summer, an idea that last appeared in the wake of the pandemic. While the government refused to be drawn on the possibility, they will be aware that the Commons Public Accounts Committee recently discovered HMRC does not actually know how many billionaires there are in the UK.