A look at the most read stories on eprivateclient this week…
Monday
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) banned a former head of private client from working in the profession. Emma Beddows, a non-solicitor who was a partner and head of private client at Kerwoods Solicitors, was found to have misappropriated £97,077.10 from a probate estate in or around September 2018.
HMRC announced that it is accepting tax relief claims for working from home due to Covid-19 during 2021/22. More than 550,000 employed workers have already claimed this tax relief. If employed workers were told to work at home by their employer because of the pandemic and, as a result, their household costs have increased, they can claim the working from home tax relief. HMRC received more than three million claims for the tax relief in the 2020/21 tax year.
Tuesday
ARC (Asset Risk Consultants) recruited Kleinwort Hambros’ former head of private banking Paul Kearney into its senior management team. Mr Kearney, who will join the London office in July and sit on the firm's board, will be responsible for driving strategic growth initiatives. Mr Kearney resigned from Kleinwort Hambros in the summer of 2020 and left in December.
A man and a woman from West Yorkshire were arrested as part of an HMRC investigation into a suspected £3.4 million Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) fraud. HMRC’s Taxpayer Protection Taskforce officers executed a search warrant in April 2021 in the Bradford area and arrested a 35-year-old man and 36-year-old woman. Both individuals were also arrested in relation to a suspected multi-million-pound tax fraud and have been released under investigation. More than £6 million held in bank accounts controlled by the pair have been frozen by HMRC.
Wednesday
Research from national UK estate agent Keller Williams UK found that of all the English regions that took part in the recent local elections, those under the control of the Liberal Democrat Party are also the areas where average house prices are highest, while Tory-led regions have seen a -1.7 percent drop in house prices since the 2019 general election.
Global fiduciary services provider IQ-EQ received regulatory approval to formally acquire Concord Trust Company (Concord), making Concord officially part of the IQ-EQ Group. News of this strategic transaction was first announced in April 2021 and is the first for IQ-EQ in the US private wealth trust space.
Thursday
UK law firm Michelmores expanded its private wealth offering with a new team that will oversee private property and landed estates. The team will be led by Christian Massey, who re-joined Michelmores as a partner from Charles Russell Speechlys. He previously worked at the firm in the 1990s and will work alongside partners Tom Hyde and Philip Wolfgang.
Foreigners opening an onshore company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will no longer require an Emirati shareholder or agent under amendments to UAE company law set to come into force from 1 June 2021, the Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported.
Friday
The UK’s Office for Tax Simplification (OTS) made 14 recommendations for changes to Capital Gains Tax (CGT) in the “most comprehensive review ever conducted of the tax”. The calls for action follows the OTS’ first CGT report in November 2020, which focused on policy design and the principles of the tax. Moving on from that, this latest report focuses on the practical, technical and administrative issues surrounding CGT.
UK law firm Royds Withy King strengthened its residential property practice with the appointment of partner Mark Scott. Mr Scott joined Royds Withy King in its London office on 10 May from Blake Morgan where he was a legal director and head of the London residential property team. He was previously a lawyer at Mishcon de Reya.