Monday
The Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, revealed his tax summary for 2022/23, showing that he paid £99,431 in tax last year, according to a summary released by the Labour Party. The publication of Sir Keir's tax summary followed on from the news last week that the UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, made over £2.3 million in the same period and paid over £500,000 in tax. The tax summary, published on Friday (16/02/2024), showed that the Labour leader paid £44,308 in income tax in 2022/23. At the same time, he also paid £52,688 in capital gains tax following the sale of a field in December 2022 partly owned by himself and partly owned by his late father's estate.
UK law firm Irwin Mitchell opened a new Brighton office as it looks to grow further in the Southeast of England. In the South, the firm already has offices in Chichester and Southampton as well as London and Gatwick. Opening in Brighton takes Irwin Mitchell’s office locations to 18 across the UK and follows new office openings in Cardiff and Liverpool in 2022. The national law firm is taking office space at Mocatta House, Trafalgar Place, a short walk from the train station.
Tuesday
UK wealth management and professional services group Evelyn Partners appointed Stephen Drew to lead its professional services team in Cambridge in a newly expanded role. Mr Drew has been with Evelyn Partners for 25 years. As regional managing partner, he is also responsible for leading the professional services team in the firm’s Birmingham office, where he has trebled both headcount and revenue in the last four years. The appointment follows Evelyn Partners’ acquisition of Ashcroft Partnership in April 2023 which gave the group a presence for its professional services business in Cambridge. The 43-strong team, based on Trumpington High Street offers clients a range of assurance, corporate finance, business and personal tax services.
Jersey-based independent trust, corporate and fund administration provider VG appointed Alison Hayward as a manager in its private wealth business. Ms Hayward has a varied portfolio of high and ultra-high net worth clients and families globally. She took over from James Amos, who progressed from senior trust officer to manager while at VG. Ms Hayward has ambitions to expand the business further under the leadership of director of private wealth Wendy Inns and managing director Iain Mason.
Wednesday
Tonia Leigh-Morgan was appointed as head of private wealth for IQ-EQ Guernsey, having spent the last five years as a client service director serving private and institutional fiduciary services clients with Guernsey trust and corporate structures. Ms Leigh-Morgan's tenure with IQ-EQ dates back 20 years, when she joined a predecessor company of IQ-EQ as its in-house legal counsel, succeeding to group legal counsel from 2014 to 2018. During that time she specialised in internal and external group contract negotiation and drafting, risk management, large scale financing and data protection.
More capital gains are received in Kensington than in Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle combined, a new report from the University of Warwick and the London School of Economics found.Researchers from the universities, using anonymised personal tax returns of everyone who received taxable capital gains between 1997 and 2020, also found that total capital gains have almost tripled over the last decade, to £65 billion by 2019/20. Despite this, most people never receive any capital gains, with less than three percent of adults paying capital gains tax (CGT) over a ten-year period. In any given year just 0.5 percent of adults receive any gains, less than the number of additional rate (45p) income tax payers. [Read more here from Will Sidery]
Thursday
London private wealth and property law firm Boodle Hatfield added Naomi Heathcote as a partner within its real estate practice. Ms Heathcote joined Boodle Hatfield from Charles Russell Speechlys. At Charles Russell Speechlys she advised urban and rural estates on residential property matters, specialising in leasehold enfranchisement cases for real estate clients.
According to the National Wills Report in 2023, only 44 percent of adults in the UK have made a Will. Direct Line has reported that only 35 percent of people have life insurance cover, despite six in ten households agreeing that it would benefit their family. Both Wills and life insurance are, for many, essential estate planning tools and, if arranged correctly, can bring a host of benefits to them and their loved ones. [Read more here]
Friday
Divorces fell by 29.5 percent in 2022, representing the lowest number of divorces since 1971, according to figures released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). There were 78,759 opposite-sex divorces, a decrease of 29.6 percent from 2021. Same-sex divorces also decreased to 1,298 in 2022, representing a decrease of 17.4 percent compared to the year prior. The median duration of marriage at divorce was 12.9 years for opposite-sex couples, a slight increase compared with 12.3 years in 2021.
KPMG UK partnered with software developer Blue J to launch a new generative AI powered product designed to answer tax research questions in seconds. KPMG will have exclusive access to the tool, Ask Blue J, among the big four accountancy firms in the UK for the first three years. This expansion builds upon KPMG’s existing alliance, which sees the firm use Blue J’s AI technology to predict tax scenario outcomes with over 90 percent accuracy for employees to then review, according to the firm. The tool is now available in the firm’s 3,000 strong tax and legal function. [Read more]