This week's opinion

I suspect many readers like me were confused by an announcement on HMRC’s website: ‘New rules for taxation of termination payments.’ It said: ‘Rules introduced to prevent manipulation of the system take effect today.’

Fortunately I hadn’t messed up. HMRC had revised a document from April on the new termination payment rules by adding a final paragraph: ‘Class 1A NIC employer charges on termination payments of more than £30 000 and on sporting testimonials of more than the £100 000 lifetime exemption had also been due to be included but due to a delay in legislation these are now due to come into effect in April 2020.’ This was buried at the foot of the page and might have been missed.

Does this matter? At one level it doesn’t. This was probably no more than a glitch in the updating process and no organisation can...