In just three short months the present tax year – 2020-21 – will end midnight, 5th April 2021.

The UK’s tax code is predominantly time limited. Any reliefs and exemptions from UK taxes for 2020-21 will mostly expire at the end of the tax year. Accordingly, there is an imperative to review your tax affairs before this date to ensure that available reliefs are utilised or that penalising tax charges are legitimately avoided.

For example, for 2020-21:

• Every UK taxpayer is allowed to realise £12,300 of taxable gains without being subject to a Capital Gains Tax charge. Any unused allowance cannot be carried forward.
• For Inheritance Tax purposes there are a range of gifts that can be made tax-free.
• Taxpayers with income exceeding £100,000, perhaps for the first time, may have an opportunity to reduce the impact of loss of their personal tax allowance and avoid a marginal Income Tax rate of 60%.
• There is still time to consult with your pensions adviser to see if you could make additional contributions within the permitted limits. This may be the last year that higher rate tax relief is allowed if the Chancellor makes expected changes to restrict this relief in the forthcoming budget.

Clearly, we all have different personal and financial circumstances so there is no one-size-fits-all approach that can be taken. There are no guarantees that you could take advantage of current exemptions and reliefs, but please call if you would like to discuss your options.

We already have more than our fair share of adversity to deal with at present, don’t let criminals add to your woes by defrauding you of hard-earned cash resources.

HMRC has recently published a warning to taxpayers about scammers posing as HMRC employees. They said:

Self-Assessment customers should be alert to criminals claiming to be from HMRC.

The department knows that fraudsters use calls, emails or texts to contact customers. In the last 12 months, HMRC has responded to more than 846,000 referrals of suspicious HMRC contact from the public and reported over 15,500 malicious web pages to internet service providers to be taken down. Almost 500,000 of the referrals from the public offered bogus tax rebates.

HMRC offer the following tips to spot a tax scam. It could be a scam if it:

• is unexpected
• offers a refund, tax rebate or grant
• asks for personal information like bank details
• is threatening
• tells you to transfer money

Clients in receipt of similar requests, either online or by telephone, should call us so that we can check if the contact is genuine or fraudulent.

Other readers should not respond to any request received by email, text or a direct call. In particular, do not divulge any personal data. Simply access the GOV.UK website and search for HMRC’s published contact numbers. Call HMRC and explain the request you have received and ask if they could check to see if it is genuine.