General Features

The Scottish parliament passed the Scottish Rate Resolution in late February 2019. This means the Scottish income tax rates and bands announced in the Scottish draft budget in December 2018 take effect on 6 April 2019.

In the Budget 2018, the Chancellor announced the introduction of a new plastic packaging tax, effective from April 2022, and it released a policy paper, ‘ Single-use plastics: Budget 2018 brief ’. The consultation has now been published, Plastic packaging tax: consultation , which sets out more details about the proposed tax and raises questions on the impact in the supply chain. The consultation period closes on 12 May 2019.

In the Making Tax Digital (‘MTD’) article in the March edition of Tax Adviser , we reported that HMRC were producing new guidance on applying for exemption for MTD: this was published on 28 February.

Universal credit full service completed its roll-out across the UK in December 2018. Existing tax credit claimants are not affected by the roll-out unless they choose to claim Universal Credit, have a change in circumstances that ends their tax credit claim (and they need to make a new claim) or they need to claim another benefit that Universal Credit has already replaced. Existing tax credit claimants will be moved to Universal Credit through a process called ‘managed migration’.