News

22.06.2020 - Coronavirus and the UK immigration system (as of 23 June 2020)

Student Visas

For short-term students:

  • In-country switching: into Tier 4 from short-term routes “will be allowed on an exceptional basis” until at least 31 July 2020.
  • Permitted study: “Short-term students who have been given an exceptional extension of leave in this category as a result of Covid-19 will be permitted to study on a further course other than that which they originally entered the UK to undertake”.
  • Extending short-term study leave: not catered for, would need to be an application for leave outside the Rules.

Visa centres overseas

All UK visa application centres overs...

21.06.2020 - HMRC again decided not to share tax data with Russia

Russia has been excluded again from the list of jurisdictions with which the UK tax authorities (HMRC) exchanges the tax information about assets of Russian citizens, automatically for 2019 year.

At the same time, Brunei Darussalam, Ecuador, Kazakhstan and Kuwait were added to the list of countries for mutual automatic exchange of information with the UK, and Albania, Oman and Peru were excluded from the list.

In response, Russian tax authorities also decided not to share CRS (Common Reporting Standard) tax data with the UK in automatic mode in 2020.

At the same time, Panama, Israel, Dominica,...

18.06.2020 - UK debt now larger than size of whole economy

The UK's debt is now worth more than its economy after the government borrowed a record amount in May.

The £55.2bn figure was nine times higher than in May last year and the highest since records began in 1993.

The borrowing splurge sent total government debt surging to £1.95trn, exceeding the size of the UK economy for the first time in more than 50 years as borrowing surged to pay for coronavirus mitigation measures, official data published on Friday (19 June) showed.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the figures confirmed the severe impact the virus was having on public finances.

"The best way to...

18.06.2020 - Businesses risk penalty if they forget to reinstate VAT direct debit

The Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT) is reminding businesses which have cancelled their direct debit in order to defer VAT payments, to set up a new one soon. Failure to get a direct debit set up in time could result in the business paying their VAT bill late - and ultimately result in a penalty charge.

As part of the Government’s package of COVID-19 support, all UK VAT registered businesses have been able to defer VAT payments due between 20 March and 30 June 2020 until 31 March 2021 at the latest.

Those businesses that usually pay their VAT by direct debits were required to cancel t...

17.06.2020 - Mastercard and Visa face billion-pound payouts to retailers after top court case in the UK

Retailers including Asda and Argos are in line for potential billion-pound payouts after the UK’s highest court ruled that transaction fees charged by Visa and Mastercard breached competition laws.

The UK's top judges ruled in favour of retailers including J Sainsbury Plc in a blow to credit-card companies that could now face billions of pounds in damages.

The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., ruling that fees the companies were charging shops restrict competition.

The long-running litigation now allows Sainsbury as well as other supermarkets including Wal-Mar...

17.06.2020 - Coronavirus: Bank pumps £100bn into UK economy to aid recovery

The Bank of England increased its bond-buying programme by a further 100 billion pounds on Thursday (18 June) to help steer the economy away from its record coronavirus slump, but sharply slowed the pace of its purchases.

Bank policymakers voted 8-1 to increase the size of its bond-buying programme.

However, they said there was growing evidence that the hit to the economy would be "less severe" than initially feared.

The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) also kept interest rates at a record low of 0.1%.

The UK economy shrank by 20.4% in April, while official jobs data showed the number of...

17.06.2020 - Immigration Health Surcharge refunds for NHS and social care workers

When the government announced on 21 May 2020 that NHS and social care workers would be made exempt from the Immigration Health Surcharge, some immigration lawyers pointed out that a political announcement is one thing, legal implementation quite another. They reminded us that “history has shown that the pressure needs to be applied even more once the grand gesture has been made”. To take one recent example, an immigration concession for people from Northern Ireland was promised in January 2020 but the actual amendments to the Immigration Rules making it happen will not come into force until la...

15.06.2020 - Extended family members can’t have any breaks in dependency on EU citizen sponsor

Reading judgments from the Upper Tribunal on the EEA Regulations often feels like going back in time. A lot of the recent case law has clarified points of law in favour of migrants but almost all have come far too late to be useful.

The latest case of Chowdhury (Extended family members: dependency) [2020] UKUT 188 (IAC) gives us the worst of both worlds. It comes to us years later than it should have and has the scope to dramatically restrict the ability of extended family members to qualify for EU settled status. In this case, the Upper Tribunal has confirmed that extended family members need...

14.06.2020 - Do coronavirus visa extensions properly, MPs urge

“The Home Office must clarify the legal basis for the offers of visa extensions”, says the Home Affairs committee of MPs in a coronavirus report published today.

The committee points out that there is considerable uncertainty about whether the department has the legal power to offer coronavirus visa extensions in the way it has done and calls for a statutory instrument to put the matter beyond doubt. Legal experts gave evidence to the inquiry and suggested that what looks like a visa extension could, in legal terms, be only a policy decision not to punish overstaying when caused by the pandemi...

14.06.2020 - Coronavirus: more than a million left out of income support, say MPs

The Treasury should act to help more than a million people who have fallen through the cracks in the government’s Covid-19 income support schemes, according to a report by an influential group of MPs.

The MPs called on Sunak to address the gaps in his coronavirus job retention scheme (CJRS) and self-employment income support scheme (SEISS).

The MPs said they recognised that Sunak’s costly financial support packages had been welcome to many of those unable to work due to the lockdown of the economy, but found that “rolling out financial support at pace and scale has inevitably resulted in some ...

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