Re-described loans do not avoid the loan charge

HMRC has published Spotlight 39 warning that schemes claiming to avoid the loan charge (due in 2019) on disguised remuneration do not work.

The scheme involves users signing documents to say that the sums they have received from their disguised remuneration scheme under loan agreements were not loans. Instead they are held by them in a ‘fiduciary capacity’.

HMRC says this is wrong: ‘Renaming something now does not change what happened in the past. Attempting to describe a loan as something else does not mean it is not a loan. The loan charge will apply to more than just loans including any form of credit or other right to a payment regardless of what it is called.’

HMRC says the only way to avoid the new loan charge in 2019 is by making a repayment of the loan balance or by settling any tax liability with HMRC in...