TheBriefing
SMEs
Banks close 140,000 SME accounts
Almost 3% of accounts held by small businesses have been closed by their banks with little or no notice over the past year.
According to a Treasury Committee report, reasons given for the de-banking of businesses include risk appetite, financial crime concerns and lack of information-sharing.
The findings are based on figures from Barclays, HSBC, TSB, Lloyds, Santander, NatWest, Metro and Handelsbanken.
Chair of the Treasury Committee Harriett Baldwin said: “One of the most startling pieces of evidence emerging from our inquiry into Access to Finance for small and medium-sized business is the readiness of lenders to close business bank accounts with little or no notice. Our committee believes that any company engaged in a legal business activity in the UK should be able to find a bank to offer them a bank account.”
ON THE IMPACT OF THE...
Final Budget before the general election
“Overall, tax has still risen a lot under this parliament. Low earners lose more from frozen income tax thresholds than they gain from NI cuts.”
Paul Johnson, director, Institute for Fiscal Studies
“Middle-earning workers gain more from rate cuts than lose from threshold freezes. Low and higher earners are the opposite, i.e. net losers. Who is getting the biggest tax rises? Pensioners.”
Torsten Bell, chief executive, Resolution Foundation
“The freeze on rate bands exposes the Chancellor to accusations of giving with one hand and taking with the other.”
Tom Minnikin, partner, Forbes Dawson
HMRC
MPs lambast HMRC over longer helpline waits
MPs in the Public Accounts Committee have heavily criticised HMRC over its customer service record as its phoneline wait times continue to deteriorate.
Nearly two-thirds of taxpayers were forced to wait more than 10 minutes to speak to an adviser, the Public Accounts Committee found. The average wait for a call to HMRC to be answered was 16 minutes and 24 seconds in the year to April 2023, according to the report by the committee. That compares with 12 minutes and 22 seconds the previous year.
HMRC said its digital services provided answers to millions of queries and was “highly-rated”.
Committee chair Meg Hillier MP said: “Almost eight years have passed since our committee challenged HMRC over its telephone lines’ holding message being one of the most streamed pieces of music in the country. Our latest report into its performance sadly illustrates a continued tale of decline in its services.”
News in numbers
The size of UK AI market in February 2024
Source: US International Trade Administration
432,000 UK organisations have embraced at least one AI technology
Source: UK Government
A record number of companies incorporated in the UK in 2023
Source: NatWest/Beauhurst analysis
Corporate insolvencies in the UK in the year to 31 January 2024
Source: Mazars/Insolvency Service data
The threshold that retirement age is predicted to rise to
Source: International Longevity Centre
The number of staff underpaid by 524 companies, which had to repay £16m
Source: HMRC
AI
KPMG rolls out AI tax tool to UK staff
An artificial intelligence software tool developed to “answer challenging tax research questions” has been launched by KPMG UK and AI developer Blue J.
Ask Blue J uses OpenAI’s Chat GPT model, which has been “finetuned for tax” and can access Blue J’s database of tax content. The tool will be able to predict tax scenario outcomes and enable its 2,700 tax staff to ask detailed questions on tax-related topics. KPMG said all outputs would be reviewed by its tax teams as Ask Blue J’s accuracy is currently only correct around 90% of the time.
