Summer 2009 Newsletter Content Pot and kettle No more stealth Pensions hit A place in the sun Ready or not... Nice motor Making allowances Good times, bad times Tax-free checkup Three square meals Funny question Dividend rules OK? Too good to be true? Pay my friend Early EIS Mind the halfpennies Just the ticket Flat rate changes Foreign Service This year, next year Partial exemption Penalties Compliance checks Under their eye Howzat? Know your rights Discipline Don't be mean Redundancy Two sorts of absence Warranties

Pay my friend A recent court case highlighted an important tax rule. A man sold his company, and the buyer agreed to pay him some money and also pay more to the company itself for it to put into his pension fund. He reported a gain including only the cash he had received directly, then tried to make a correction to his tax return which would lead to a repayment. HMR&C refused, so he appealed to the court. The judge said that they were right to refuse - he should be paying more tax, not less, because the money paid to the company was just as much sale proceeds as the money he received himself. If you can direct someone to pay money to someone else, then you have to be treated as entitled to that money. This taxpayer was lucky - it was too late now to raise an assessment to collect the extra tax. So he lost his repayment, but was still better off than he should have been... apart, no doubt, from a lot of lawyers' bills. He may be wishing he had kept quiet.