The Great Umbrella.co.uk Bake Off! A different staff member has volunteered to bake every Thursday for the next few months. Here's this week’s Cookie Monster Showstopper, created by Alex Peet in Accountancy Services.

Budget 2015 confirmed that a review of contractors expenses and in particular travel & subsistence would take place in the summer of 2015 with potential changes being made for the tax year commencing 6^th April 2016. It proposes that Supervision, Direction and Control (SDC) will be the key factors in deciding whether a contractor is genuinely a self-employed or should in fact be treated as an employee of the end client where they are working.

The Government has published the full budget 2015. A search for contractors, freelancers and umbrella companies highlights the following:

Umbrella companies and employment intermediaries

1.250 Autumn Statement 2014 announced that the government would review the growing use of overarching contracts of employment that allow some temporary workers and their employers to benefit from tax relief for home-to-work travel expenses, relief not generally available to other workers. This is unfair. As a result of the review, the government will change the rules to restrict travel and subsistence relief for workers engaged through an employment intermediary, such as an umbrella company or a personal service company, and under the supervision, direction and control of the end-user. This will take effect from April 2016 following a consultation on the detail of the changes. It will level the playing field between employment businesses that seek to lower their costs by using these arrangements and those that do not.

Today, 18^th March 2015, is the final budget before the General Election. At Umbrella.co.uk we will be reporting all the changes that will affect contractors, freelancers and umbrella companies.

Because this is the last budget pre-election many hope that it will be an opportunity for good news as the Tories will be keen to gain support.

HMRC has published the cost of administering IR35 and an estimate of the tax they think they’d lose if it was abolished. This despite the cost of administering IR35 greatly outweighing the cash collected from IR35 investigations.

The report estimates the cost of administering IR35 to be £16m and the tax that would be lost if it was abolished to be £550m.

Only one week to go until the Chancellor, the Rt Hon George Osborne MP, delivers his  2015 budget.

The budget will be delivered to Parliament at 12.30pm on Wednesday, 18^th March. Live coverage is on BBC2.

The good news for the average tax payer is that because it is an election year (Thursday 7^th May) then the Conservative Party should be keen to spread the feel good factor and cut taxes in order to maximise votes!

HMRC have a series of webinars coming up for the benefit of contractors and subcontractors that use or want to use the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS).

A webinar is an hour long presentation that also allows those watching to participate in a questions and answers session.

A glance around the UK’s media landscape reveals certain themes to the column inches and news clips we consume. In particular, the subject of pensions takes up a daily residency in our economic news diet.

News across the oil and gas landscape has been a little jittery (to say the least) in recent months. With prices continuing to drop, the industry body Oil & Gas UK reported that overall in 2014, the sector had managed to spend over £5billion more than it managed to earn. Other lowlights from the report showed that production fell slightly at a 1% rate, that only 8 new fields had been sanctioned and that production revenues peaked at £24.4billion – the lowest rate since 1998.

On 3^rd March 2015 the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) issued its report headed “Employment Status Report”. The aim of the report was to tackle the complexities in deciding whether a person was employed or self-employed for tax purposes and the issues on employment rights particularly for the low paid.

HMRC have produced a list of Professional membership fees and subscriptions for which tax relief is available. Tax relief is available provided that:

• The organization you pay appears on the HMRC list;
• You pay the cost rather than your employer;
• The fee is not for a lifetime membership; and
• You require membership to do your job or it is helpful to have.