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Just eight weeks after former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unexpectedly announced the largest package of tax cuts implemented in the UK since the 1970s, the UK Government has now effectively gone into full reverse following new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement, delivered on 17 November 2022, in which he announced a £55 billion combined package of tax rises and spending cuts intended to shore up the UK’s public finances.

Following a highly negative response from the financial markets and the IMF, amongst others, to the UK Government’s “Growth Plan 2022” (released on 23 September 2022 by the then-new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and summarised by us here) (the “Mini-Budget”), the replacement Chancellor Jeremy Hunt made an Emergency Statement on 17 October in which he announced, by way of a major Government “U Turn”, that almost all of the tax measures set out in the former Chancellor’s Mini-Budget would not now be implemented.

Against a backdrop of rising inflation and increasing concern about a “cost of living crisis” in the UK, the newly appointed Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, laid out the Government’s plans for growing the UK economy in his “Growth Plan 2022”, released 23 September 2022.

HMRC has recently updated its guidance on the UK’s new qualifying asset holding company (QAHC) tax regime, which was introduced from 1 April 2022, to include examples of the application of the QAHC regime “activity condition” to credit funds (i.e. the requirement for a QAHC to carry out mainly investment business, with any other activity, such as trading, being ancillary to it and not carried on to any substantial extent).

The UK qualifying asset holding company (“QAHC”) tax regime came into force on 1 April 2022.

Two new United Kingdom (“UK”) data transfer mechanisms, the International Data Transfer Agreement (“IDTA”) and the International Data Transfer Addendum (“UK Addendum”) to the European Union’s (“EU”) new standard contractual clauses (“SCCs”), came into force on March 21, 2022.

New guidance has been issued by HMRC setting out their new policy on the VAT treatment of early termination fees and compensation payments, supplanting heavily criticised guidance issued in 2020.

On 29 October 2021, the UK government introduced The Companies (Strategic Report) (Climate-related Financial Disclosure) Regulations 2021¹ (the “Draft Regulations”), which would, once in force, amend the Companies Act of 2006 and require mandatory climate-related financial disclosures by large UK registered companies and financial institutions.

On June 24, 2021, UK law enforcement seized a record-setting £114 million (nearly $160 million) in cryptocurrency as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation.

In a striking rebuke, the U.K. Supreme Court found that the U.K. Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”) overstepped its authority when it tried to access corporate documents from the United States.