Investments and capital allowances Is your business in need of new plant or machinery? As announced in the 2012 Autumn Statement, the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) has now increased ten-fold from £25,000 to £250,000 in the tax year. Businesses will have two years to take advantage of the increased amount of investment that qualifies for…
Read More….
HMRC have launched their latest target industry campaign. It is the Direct Selling Campaign. Direct selling is where you sell directly to a customer, often door to door, in customers homes or their workplace. This can include selling to friends and families. Companies can use different terms for the people who sell their…
Read More….
It is not often I get one of those inspirational moments to write a blog on a topic; however, an enquiry yesterday made me want to talk about this topic. The enquiry: “I’ve been freelance for 20 years and usually make a reasonable gross profit. We’ve found a great mortgage deal. Perfect! *BUT* they won’t…
Read More….
It has long been the common conception of accountants that they are merely number crunchers and form fillers. But is this really what they do? It could easily be argued that the external accountant of a business is the most valuable adviser to that business. The numbers in the Financial Statements can tell a lot about a business and…
Read More….
The objective of the Approved Mileage Allowance Payment (AMAP) scheme is to support the transport needs of business. Employees that use their own car for business journeys can be paid the AMAP, free of tax and NIC. The AMAP rate has been fixed at 40p per mile for what seems like forever (actually 2002!); However,…
Read More….
So here we go again! You should now be receiving your notices to complete a self assessment return for the tax year to 5 April 2011. You must ensure that this is completed by 31st January 2012 (31st Otober 2011 if completed on paper). This gives plenty of time to get it done; however, that…
Read More….
The Revenue has announced the launch of its latest campaign to identify tax fraud. They are looking to crack down on people, particularly the self employed, of fraudulently claiming tax credits. It is part on a government programme, in
On 14 October 2010 the Government published its latest proposed amendments to our pension legislation and as is invariably the case what The Government gives in one hand they invariably take away in another. What’s important is does this affect you now and in the future? Here is a summary of the changes; The lifetime…
Read More….
Class 2 National insurance is payable by sole traders and usually a small weekly/ monthly amount. From April 2011, the way in which Class 2 NIC is payable will be changing. It will now match the self assessment dates of 31 January and 31 July. Only two bills per year will therefore
The taxman joined twitter just before xmas and I’d encourage fellow tweeters, whether taxpayers or accountants, to follow twitter.com/hmrcgovuk (and by all means follow @TheTaxBuzz too!) HMRC’s twitter policy statement says that if you follow this account, you can expect 1-2 tweets