An update from CIOT and ATT

General Features

01 June 2020

Dear member,

How are you? We hope you are bearing up under the strain of Covid-19 and the accompanying restrictions on how we work and live. At time of writing, the government has just begun slowly easing restrictions but it seems it will be a long time before we get back to anything resembling normal life.

In line with the latest government advice, CIOT and ATT are continuing to operate remotely, with our office closed, staff working from home and all meetings and events taking place online. A small number of our staff have been temporarily furloughed but all departments are still operating, albeit that response times may sometimes be longer than usual.

Relevant contact details can be found at our CIOT contact us page and our ATT contact us page.

Covid-19 economic response guidance

We continue to work closely with HMRC and other professional bodies, sharing relevant information and providing feedback on the effectiveness of the various coronavirus economic response measures. Both the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) and the Self-employment Income Support Scheme have been huge endeavours implemented at astonishing speed. While both inevitably have rough edges, it has been an undeniably impressive achievement to get them up and running at scale in the time available. HMRC deserve their Outstanding Contribution to Tax in 2019/20 Award in last month’s Taxation Awards.

HMRC have made clear to us how grateful they are for your support, and that of other tax professionals, in ensuring that employers know what they can do to get ready to make their claims under the CJRS in particular. We recognise that this has not been easy. New information on the government’s schemes – and other measures such as deferrals, relaxations and how to communicate with HMRC during the crisis – is being published daily. We will continue to do all we can to keep you up to date with announcements. As well as following developments and discussion on Twitter and LinkedIn, you can access our Covid-19 pages on both our websites which are updated daily. (See box below for relevant links.)

Online CPD and webinars open to all members

Our Branches and Events teams continue to make available online webinars.

In May, over 600 members joined our SEISS webinar delivered by CIOT’s Margaret Curran and Richard Wild, and ATT’s Emma Rawson. Over 1,700 people (and counting) have viewed the recording, which you can still view them here.

There is still time to register for June’s ATT Conferences. This will be fully online, with a mix of live and recorded content from our expert presenters.

As publicised in this edition of Tax Adviser, this year’s CTA Address (2 July, 5pm–6.30pm) will be delivered online. For the first time ever we can extend an invitation to all our members – ATT as well as CIOT – to watch the Address and take part in the subsequent discussion. We are using this year’s event to raise money for the tax advice charities – Tax Aid and Tax Help. Their work is needed now more than ever! Please do contribute, and join us for the debate.

Member support

We continue to be here for you, should you need support or have a query. Please email us at membership@ciot.org.uk or membership@att.org.uk and we will be happy to help. We welcome and encourage your feedback. We will be launching a short member survey in June to invite you to share your experiences and thoughts on the impact that the Covid-19 crisis is having on you/your business/your employer. Please do take part. We will, of course, share the results with you.

And finally, congratulations to LITRG, who won the award for ‘Best specialist team in a public or not for profit organisation’ category; to Meredith McCammond (a LITRG Technical Officer) who won ‘Best Rising Star in Tax’; and to Robin Williamson MBE (former Technical Director of LITRG) who won the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award. Well done to all three, as well as the CIOT Technical Committee, which was also shortlisted.