HMRC has today released new guidance on the terms available to taxpayers wishing to settle historic disguised remuneration arrangements. The guidance applies to a number of different arrangements including EBTs, EFRBS and contractor loan arrangements.The full guidance can be found here.
The tax analysis set out in the guidance is complicated and anyone who has implemented arrangements of this type will need to make sure that they fully understand all the options available to them to deal with historic, and potential future liabilities that could arise from the arrangements. In particular it will be necessary to consider the interactions of various taxes that can apply to these arrangements and the different charging points to determine the potential overall cost of reaching an agreement with HMRC. Any potential agreement will need to be assessed against the impact of the proposed April 2019 loan charge and/or continuing to challenge HMRC's view of the matter.
It is therefore important that taxpayers who have not yet taken any action in respect of their historic disguised remuneration arrangements seek specialist tax advice to determine how the guidance will apply to them, and understand all of the options available to them.
