April 4th, 2013: HMRC has announced that, for financial year 2013/14 onwards, all sleeping partners and limited partners will henceforth be liable to class 2 and class 4 national insurance (NI) contributions. For 2013/14, class 2 is levied at a flat rate of £2.70 per week but is subject to various exceptions, while class 4 is levied at 9% on tax profits between £7,755 - £41,450, and 2% thereafter. Previously, the view has been that - as these types of partner are not involved in the running of a partnership - they were not self employed earners and so not within the remit of national insurance.
EU Member States have until 1 July 2012 to implement a new Amending Directive into national law which provides revisions for the Prospectus Directive (2003/71/EC) and the Transparency Directive (2004/109/EC). The Amending Directive 2010/73/EC (“the Directive”) was adopted by the European Parliament and Council on 24 November 2010.
HM Treasury issued a consultation on contractual schemes for collective investment on 9 January 2012. In the 2011 Budget, the Government announced plans for a new tax transparent fund (TTF) vehicle to be made available within the UK. The purpose of the TTF is to increase the UK’s competitiveness in the European UCITS market, by making it possible for UK domiciled funds to act as UCITS IV master funds for the first time. In order to be an attractive proposition on a cross-border basis, master funds must be tax transparent - i.e. the investors are treated as though they had invested directly in the schemes’ underlying assets.
