Category: News

On 3 March 2021 Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered the Spring Budget setting out his plans as the United Kingdom starts to ease the lockdown and revealing the goals that he is looking to achieve after the pandemic.

Presenting the government’s spending plans for the year ahead, the Chancellor announced the new measures with the intention of helping businesses and jobs through these difficult times.

The measures are aimed at supporting the country’s long-term economic recovery as well as rebalancing the public finances with the help of tax rising.

Below is a summary of the key announcements for the private client world.

Property

• The stamp duty holiday has been extended and will now end on 30 June instead of 31 March.
• The nil rate band will be £250,000 until the end of September. The government will return to the usual level of £125,000 from 1 October.

Tax

•  The income personal allowance will increase to £12,570 from £12,500 for the 2021/22 tax year. The basic rate threshold will increase to £37,700 from £37,500.
• The income tax personal allowance and higher rate threshold are then to be frozen until April 2026.
• The starting rate limit for savings will remain at £5,000 for the 2021/22 tax year. This band of savings income is subject to the 0% starting rate.
• The Capital Gains Tax (CGT) annual exemption will remain at £12,300 for individuals and personal representatives until April 2026.
• The lifetime allowance on pension contributions has been frozen at its current 2020/21 level of £1,073,100.
• The annual ISA adult subscription limit will remain at £20,000, and the annual subscription limit for Junior ISAs will remain at £9,000.

 Charities

•  The government will continue supporting the country’s social enterprises that are looking for growth investment by extending the SITR scheme to 6 April 2023.
•  The government will provide armed forces charities with up to £475,000 in the 2021/22 tax year to support the development of a digital and data strategy.
• The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust will receive additional £10 million in 2021/22 tax year for charitable projects and initiatives that support veterans with mental health needs across the country.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact James Cohen directly on [email protected] or 0207 822 2257.

© 2021 GSC Solicitors LLP. All rights reserved.  GSC grants permission for the browsing of this material and for the printing of one copy per person for personal reference. GSC’s written permission must be obtained for any other use of this material. This publication has been prepared only as a guide to provide readers with general information on recent legal developments. It is not formal legal advice and should not be relied on for any purpose. You should not act or refrain from acting based on the information contained in this document without obtaining specific formal advice from suitably qualified advisors.

Delivering his Budget statement, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced today that the stamp duty land tax holiday will be extended.

Sunak has confirmed that the current stamp duty holiday (nil rate band of £500,000) has been extended and will now end on 30 June instead of 31 March.

The stamp duty holiday was initially introduced to boost the property market hit by the lockdowns due to Covid-19 and help buyers who might have suffered financially from Covid-19 and its consequences.

According to Sunak, the policy is to assist people to buy their own homes: ‘As the prime minister has said, we want to turn generation rent into generation buy.’

In order to ‘smooth the transition back to normal’, the nil rate band will be £250,000 – ‘double its standard level’ – until the end of September. The government will return to the usual level of £125,000 from 1 October.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact James Cohen directly on [email protected] or 0207 822 2257.

© 2021 GSC Solicitors LLP. All rights reserved.  GSC grants permission for the browsing of this material and for the printing of one copy per person for personal reference. GSC’s written permission must be obtained for any other use of this material. This publication has been prepared only as a guide to provide readers with general information on recent legal developments. It is not formal legal advice and should not be relied on for any purpose. You should not act or refrain from acting based on the information contained in this document without obtaining specific formal advice from suitably qualified advisors.

 

It was announced by the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, on 3 March, that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (commonly known as furlough) is to be extended once again. This time it is to be extended from 30 April 2021 to 30 September 2021.

An employee on furlough will still receive 80% of their wages (up to a maximum of £2,500 per month) for hours not worked.

However, from 1 July 2021, the government will only contribute 70% of the employee’s wages for hours not worked (the other 10% to be made up by the employer) and from 1 August 2021 the government will only contribute 60% of the employee’s wages for hours not worked (the other 20% to be made up by the employer).

Although nothing is certain, with the positive effects of lockdown and the vaccination programme in dealing with Coronavirus, the government probably see this as the last time they will need to extend furlough.

The law in this article is current as of 4 March 2021.

If you have any employment law queries, please do not hesitate to contact David Nathan at [email protected] or on 020 7822 2247.

© 2021 GSC Solicitors LLP. All rights reserved. GSC grants permission for the browsing of this material and for the printing of one copy per person for personal reference. GSC’s written permission must be obtained for any other use of this material. This publication has been prepared only as a guide to provide readers with general information on recent legal developments. It is not formal legal advice and should not be relied on for any purpose. You should not act or refrain from acting based on the information contained in this document without obtaining specific formal advice from suitably qualified advisors.

 

Islamic finance is a financial system that keeps within the moral and ethical principles of Islamic law (known as Sharia) and is therefore Sharia compliant.

Islamic financial principles have been around since the advent of Islam in the 7^th century CE. However, the formal establishment of a fully-fledged system was introduced in the 1960s in Egypt, with Islamic finance entering the UK markets in the 1980s.

Whilst Islamic financial institutions are able to offer many similar products to those offered by other finance institutions, the main difference lies within the practices and principles that are used. Most banks offer lending and borrowing based on interest, whereas Islamic financial institutes are not lending institutes, instead they work as trading/investment houses.

Islamic law aims to promote social justice in the economy through a number of prohibitions and requirements. The main prohibitions in Islamic finance include a ban on interest, prohibiting investments in forbidden (haram) items/activities, prohibiting speculation (maisir) and uncertainty and risk (gharar). Islam requires all Muslims to pay a mandatory almsgiving (zakat) which is a compulsory donation to charity once an individual meets the minimum threshold for payment.

Islamic law prohibits interest (riba) as in Islam, money itself has no intrinsic value and instead is seen as a measure of value, and not valuable in itself. It is a medium of exchange or a unit of measurement, but not an asset. Each unit is equal in value to another unit in the same denomination and it is therefore not permissible for a profit to be made by exchanging these units (money) with another person/entity.

Instead of promoting transactions that favour one party over the other, Islam encourages partnership. This means that, where possible, both profit and risk are shared between the parties.

There are many forms of partnership agreements, including mudarabah which is a profit and loss sharing partnership offered by most Islamic financial institutions. This form of partnership is one where one partner provides all the capital (silent partner/financer) and the other partner (working partner) provides expertise and is responsible for the management and investment of the capital. The profits are then shared between the parties according to a pre-agreed ratio. The losses (if any) unless caused by negligence or breach of contract are borne by the financer/Islamic bank.

Islamic finance products and services are available to all and not just Muslims.

If you wish to discuss Islamic finance products and the options available to you, please contact Leila Mustafa on [email protected] or 020 7822 2243.

© 2021 GSC Solicitors LLP. All rights reserved. GSC grants permission for the browsing of this material and for the printing of one copy per person for personal reference. GSC’s written permission must be obtained for any other use of this material. This publication has been prepared only as a guide to provide readers with general information on recent legal developments. It is not formal legal advice and should not be relied on for any purpose. You should not act or refrain from acting based on the information contained in this document without obtaining specific formal advice from suitably qualified advisors.

 

It was announced on 26 January that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (commonly known as furlough) is to be extended once again. This time it is to be extended from 31 March 2021 to 30 April 2021.

The amount that an employer can claim under the scheme will remain the same (being 80% of an employee’s salary, capped at £2,500 per month, in respect of hours not worked), it is just the length of the scheme that has changed.

Given that the UK economy is still in lockdown, the extending of the scheme is to be welcomed. However, the reality may be that, for some employees, all the extension is doing is kicking the harsh can of redundancy further down the line.

The law in this article is current as of 1 February 2021.

If you have any employment law queries, please do not hesitate to contact David Nathan at [email protected] or on 020 7822 2247.

© 2021 GSC Solicitors LLP. All rights reserved. GSC grants permission for the browsing of this material and for the printing of one copy per person for personal reference. GSC’s written permission must be obtained for any other use of this material. This publication has been prepared only as a guide to provide readers with general information on recent legal developments. It is not formal legal advice and should not be relied on for any purpose. You should not act or refrain from acting based on the information contained in this document without obtaining specific formal advice from suitably qualified advisors.

In our modern world which increasingly relies on technology, digital assets are something that people who use a computer, tablet or smartphone certainly have. While digital assets may not necessarily have a monetary value, they definitely have sentimental value. For example, photographs and videos create memories which makes them irreplaceable and priceless. This is why it is so important for people to understand what will happen to their digital assets and include them in their wills.

While social media accounts, emails and online account details may be treasured even more than physical possessions, very few people understand the importance of access to such information, and digital assets are very often overlooked in wills. The most obvious examples of digital assets are:

• Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
• Share Trading Accounts
• Email Accounts
• Bank Accounts including PayPal
• Online Gambling Sites
• Virtual Currency
• Cloud Storage
• Content Holders – eBooks, Spotify, iTunes, etc.
• Online Auction Sites – eBay, Gumtree, etc.
• Domain Names.

According to the Law Society, the number of people making or updating their wills has skyrocketed during the pandemic. However, in spite of all these efforts, the majority of people still do not have their affairs in order.

The research conducted by the Law Society has found that 93% of those who have a will in place have not included any digital assets in it, and three quarters of people do not know what will happen to their digital assets at all.

Considering your digital assets when making a Will is more important than ever and in the event of death you need to consider putting in place a Will that makes provisions for the management of digital assets and to maintain a log of the digital assets you have.

At GSC Solicitors LLP we are able to advise people on the best way to include both their physical and digital assets in their wills. This is crucial to ensure that people’s estates will be inherited according to their wishes, and their family members will not face any unnecessary difficulties that will cause additional stress to their already grieving families.

To have a quick chat with about adding digital assets to your existing will or even if you do not have one in place, please do not hesitate to contact James Cohen directly on [email protected] or 0207 822 2257.

© 2021 GSC Solicitors LLP. All rights reserved.  GSC grants permission for the browsing of this material and for the printing of one copy per person for personal reference. GSC’s written permission must be obtained for any other use of this material. This publication has been prepared only as a guide to provide readers with general information on recent legal developments. It is not formal legal advice and should not be relied on for any purpose. You should not act or refrain from acting based on the information contained in this document without obtaining specific formal advice from suitably qualified advisors.