Year End Tax Review 2009/2010 Contents Lead articles The year ahead... This year, next year Pension hit Employees Too much NIC NIC and pensions Company cars Tax-free benefits Business - General Time to incorporate? His and hers Family bonus Profit and loss Show me the money Can't pay, won't pay? Turning back the clock Business - VAT Standard VAT or flat VAT? VAT goes down - must come up? European revolution A good start for VAT Happy returns? Investments Top-up savings Rainy day money Capital Gains Gains favoured Splitting gains A place in the country Holiday lets end Families Family fortunes Where there's a Will Credits and debits Piggy banks Still trustworthy? Administration Penalty shoot-out Paperwork, paperwork Pay tax later Opportunity knocks again Charity Give and save Non-Domiciled People Home and away Interest Interesting times

Holiday lets end We are all Europeans now. One of the fundamental rules of the European Union is that governments cannot treat their own businesses more favourably than businesses from other member states - you can't be mean to foreigners just because they are foreign. It's surprising how often our Government forgets this. We've had business-friendly rules for "furnished holiday letting" (FHL) for many years. Now someone has pointed out that only UK properties qualified - zut alors! Verboten! So the Chancellor has announced that the generous rules will be extended to properties elsewhere in Europe, and backdated to April 2003 if you have the records - but then the whole scheme will be withdrawn on 5 April 2010. We are allowed to be mean to foreigners as long as we are mean to ourselves as well. There probably aren't many people who have a foreign holiday cottage which qualifies as FHL - if you didn't think you could benefit, you probably wouldn't have ticked all the boxes. If you think you might, you could make a claim for repayment of past tax. If you have any FHL property, in the UK or elsewhere, it will be important to plan for the withdrawal of the relief. Entrepreneurs' Relief reduces CGT on the first £1m of lifetime business gains from 18% to 10%, and FHL properties have qualified for this favourable treatment. There has been concern that there could be an immediate jump to the normal 18% rate on a sale of FHL property after 5 April 2010. That might cause a mad scramble and a collapse in the market, but HMRC have announced that disposing of an "ex-FHL property" within three years of the rules changing will qualify for Entrepreneurs' Relief. So there is no need to sell in a hurry, but it will be worth thinking about before 5 April 2013. Action Point! If you have any FHL, think about the change of tax treatment