This week’s miscellaneous updates – 16 March 2026

In this week’s detailed miscellaneous updates which you can read more about below, the National Audit Office has published its latest tax focused report, ‘Taxing Large Businesses’, and HMRC has published a consultation on modernising and standardising company tax returns.

In other news this week:

• Ahead of mandatory payrolling of benefits in kind (BIKs) from April 2027, employers who have not previously payrolled BIKs who would like to do so from 2026/27 have until 5 April 2026 to register with HMRC,
• Members of the House of Lords recently concluded report stage of the National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill,
• HMRC has published a page collating all the explanatory notes and tax information and impact notes for Government amendments in the report stage of the latest Finance Bill which was debated by the House of Commons Public Bill Committee last week, 
• From 1 April 2026, businesses wanting to use the VAT import one stop shop scheme will be able to register via an agent,

• The latest schedule of HMRC Talking Points live and recorded webinars for tax agents is available for booking. Spaces are limited, so take a look now and save your place, and finally,
• Check HMRC’s online services availability page for details of planned downtime and the online services affected.

National Audit Office report ‘Taxing Large Businesses’

The National Audit Office (NAO) has published its latest tax focused report, ‘Taxing Large Businesses’. The report examines whether HMRC’s approach to large business tax compliance is delivering value for money and covers:

• the taxes paid by large businesses,
• HMRC’s approach to working with large businesses, and
• the effectiveness of HMRC’s approach.

In arriving at its conclusions, the NAO’s work was designed to test the effectiveness and productivity of HMRC’s approach, and it also focused on the work of HMRC’s large business directorate. However, the report does not  examine in detail how each of the tax regimes affecting large businesses operate, nor the rules determining how much each business should pay. It also has not examined the amount of tax paid by individual businesses, or whether these amounts are correct.

The report concludes that there is little doubt that HMRC’s compliance work with large businesses offers good value for money. £337 billion in taxes was collected from large businesses in 2024/25, including those taxes that large businesses pay directly and those they pay on behalf of their employees and customers. The collection of £15.8 billion in additional taxes by HMRC’s large business directorate brought in £95 for every £1 spent on staff pay, four times more than what HMRC achieves across all taxpayers, which represents a good return on investment.

The NAO also found that large businesses carry particularly significant tax risks, hence HMRC’s enhanced focus on them through a separate directorate makes sense. However, the size of the large business tax gap relative to revenue is low. Large businesses also rate their experience of dealing with HMRC highly compared to other taxpayer groups.

The NAO’s report director has summarised its findings in a video which can be found on the report’s overview page.

HMRC consults on modernising and standardising company tax returns

HMRC recently opened the consultation ‘Modernising and standardising company tax returns’ which was first announced at the 2025 Autumn Budget last November.  The consultation seeks views on:

• the proposed implementation timescales and enforcement options for prescribing the format, content and data tagging of Corporation Tax computations, and
• mandatory online filing of amended company tax returns.

The consultation sets out exemptions that would apply to mandatory online filing of amendments and seeks views on whether any additional exemptions should be considered. It also asks whether, for practical reasons, mandation should commence later than 1 April 2027. HMRC invites views on this consultation no later than 2 June 2026. The following consultation was also recently opened ‘Extend Notification of Uncertain Tax Treatment regime’ and closes on 4 June 2026.