This week's opinion: 13 August 2020

The spectre of coronavirus continues to haunt the tax world. Two of our articles this week are directly concerned with issues relating to the virus and a third dealing with the reduced VAT rate on some hospitality supplies exists only because of changes brought about to combat its economic effect.

As the various support schemes begin to wind down I anticipate that times could start to get tougher for our profession. In the short term agents have been busy helping clients obtain much-needed support but this will not continue for ever. In the first place it is a sad fact that many businesses will not survive after support is withdrawn: each of those failures besides being a personal tragedy for the owners represents lost fee income. More importantly I believe it is inevitable that the businesses which do trade through the crisis - which I...