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Company car tax
Does it pay off to provide zero-emission cars? Offering a company car as a benefit can be a valuable and attractive perk to any valued employee. Unfortunately, it is not necessarily a tax-free perk and it may be liable for PAYE because HMRC considers the private use of a company car to be a benefit-in-kind.…
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Tracing lost pensions
Billions of pounds lost in unclaimed funds. Helping you plan for your retirement is one of our core services, ensuring you are prepared when the time comes to call it a day. With medical advances enabling more people to live for longer, the average person who retires at 65 lives for another 20 years. According…
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Year end tax guide 2019/20
Year-End Tax Guide 2019/20 The last few months of the tax year are the ideal time to pause and reflect, and to make sure you’ve organised your finances as efficiently as possible before the new tax year begins on 6 April 2020. It’s important to consider this from every angle: have you maximised all of…
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New tax rates for 2020/21
The new government intends to announce the 2020/21 tax rates, bands and allowances in a full Budget next month. Prime Minister Boris Johnson secured a handsome majority on 12 December 2019, and swiftly returned Sajid Javid to the position of Chancellor. Javid was poised to deliver his first Budget speech in November 2019, only for…
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High earners need to read this
High earners could face large tax bills if they fail to declare pension contributions on their 2018/19 tax returns, according to a report. When completing self-assessment, taxpayers are asked if they have put any money into a pension scheme above the annual pensions allowance. For most people, this allowance is £40,000 – but for every…
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IR35 and some changes
The planned extension of the new off-payroll rules to the private sector will be included in a review into how the new government can provide better support to the self-employed. The pre-election admission by Chancellor Sajid Javid increases the prospect of the controversial tax measure, which was contained in Finance Bill 2019, being delayed. “In…
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Cash flow is king to survival
A quarter of small business owners in the UK believe their company will fold in the next four years, research has claimed. Late payments (54%), tax rates (44%) and cyber-attacks (27%) were the biggest concerns among the 500 owner-managers polled by cloud accounting software provider Xero. Other challenges included Brexit (44%), maintaining or boosting levels…
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The missing budget 2019
It’s been an eventful few years in British politics, but 2019 has been something else again with one jolt after another. The 29 March deadline for the UK to leave the EU was extended to 31 October and then again until 31 January 2020. Boris Johnson replaced Theresa May as Prime Minister and Sajid Javid…
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Protecting your business from fraud
Steps to shield your firm from threats. Fraud costs the UK around £190 billion a year, with businesses bearing almost three quarters – £140bn – of those losses. This worrying picture is backed up by the 2019 Fraudscape report compiled by anti-fraud body Cifas, which provides statistics for fraud committed by employees. The report read:…
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Capital gains tax and property – changes are on the way
Tax changes to private residences for 2020/21. From 6 April 2020, HMRC is proposing three significant changes which will potentially increase the capital gains tax paid on the disposal of any residential property by an individual. These changes seek to raise extra revenue from the disposal of residential properties and to collect these taxes more…
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Employers need help to absorb the planned national living wage hike
Business groups want more support to help employers meet the Chancellor’s pledge to raise the national living wage to £10.50 an hour by 2024. Chancellor Sajid Javid announced his intention to implement the hike alongside lowering the age threshold for those who qualify for the living wage from 25 to 21. The national living wage…
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Inheritance Tax – don’t fall into the trap
A record amount of estates paid inheritance tax in 2016/17, according to government figures. More than 28,100 estates were liable for death duties in 2016/17 – a new high for the number of estates charged. The latest figure represented a 15% rise on the previous year’s figure of 24,500, and continued the trend of year-on-year…
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Stamp duty revenue down for HMRC
The Treasury’s take from stamp duty land tax fell by the largest amount since the start of 2008/09, government figures show. In England and Northern Ireland, HMRC collected £11.94 billion in stamp duty receipts on completed property or land purchases in 2018/19 – a 7% decline on the previous tax year. That represents the biggest…
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Are you saving into your pension plan?
A government-backed pension provider is trialling emotive messages to nudge sole traders to start retirement saving. The messages from NEST aim to persuade the self-employed to sign up for pensions through payment or accountancy platforms or trade and industry bodies. Four messages are being tested to encourage savings behaviour, including ‘could you save £2.50 a…
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Regulator slams poor standards of charity accounts audits
Most auditors and independent examiners in England and Wales failed to identify failings in charity accounts in 2017/18. The claim comes from the Charity Commission, which scrutinised 296 charity accounts with various annual incomes. The Commission found that accounts reviewed by auditors met its benchmark more regularly than independent examiners. How its benchmark is applied…
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Self-employed owe £1.6bn to HMRC in late tax payments for 2017/18
New figures show self-assessment taxpayers owe HMRC more than £1.6 billion in late payments on 2017/18 tax bills. The deadline for 2017/18 submissions came and went on 31 January 2019, with more than 11.5 million taxpayers beating the midnight cut-off – a new high. Despite a record number of tax returns submitted early this year,…
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Small employers risk losing the employment allowance in 2020
Plans to remove the employment allowance for large employers from April 2020 could impact on smaller firms. This allowance provides employers with a reduction to their national insurance contributions (NICs) bill of up to £3,000. Employers that claim the allowance can carry it forward from one tax year to the next, but that will stop…
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Making Tax Digital – Most VAT-registered businesses are signed up for Making Tax Digital
Almost three quarters (74%) of VAT-registered firms signed up for Making Tax Digital (MTD) before the second stagger deadline last month. HMRC’s figures showed that over 230,000 mandated businesses joined the scheme before the 7 September 2019 deadline. Most (94%) signed-up businesses submitted VAT returns before both the first and second stagger deadlines. Around 80,000…
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Property investment – good idea?
With low interest rates, property remains attractive. As the global financial crisis began to bite in 2008, central banks in several nations took action, attempting to shock the world economy back to life by slashing base interest rates. The idea behind this kind of stimulus is to make saving less attractive, hopefully prompting people to…
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IR35 in the private sector
Key considerations for contractors before April 2020. Large and medium-sized organisations have just six months left to prepare for changes to off-payroll working rules, which are due to extend to the private sector next spring. From 6 April 2020, firms that engage private-sector contractors will be responsible for deciding if the rules should apply and…
