Covid-19, and the Government’s response, has posed the most severe peacetime challenge to the UK economy in living memory. But real and sustained growth is attainable for the prepared business. Whilst the latest Office for National Statistics data indicates that the UK economy is 4.4% smaller, in GDP terms, than it [...]
Xero is not only there to make your bookkeepers lives easier - it can also help you to manage your business. Lack of understanding of your finances has been identified as one of the top barriers to growth. In the past, business owners either relied on their bookkeepers to run reports [...]
When you think of liquidations, you often think of the insolvent variety, where you can’t pay your creditors and have to close the company in a formal manner. However, liquidations don’t have to be this way; they can also be used to close solvent companies i.e., companies that have cash in [...]
Xero has some great features, that are included in the fee you pay, but are not often used as they are not part of the core product and are often overlooked. The Budgeting Manager is one such feature. Budgeting itself is important if you want to keep some financial control [...]
After listening carefully to the Budget today, we can report on the headline announcements and how they affect you as a business owner. As usual, the detailed nuances will become apparent over the coming days, but this newsletter contains the highlights. This was always going to be a balancing act for Rishi, as [...]
Salary sacrifice is an agreement to reduce an employee’s entitlement to cash pay, usually in return for a non-cash benefit, such as providing the employee with an asset or healthcare. As an employer, you can set up a salary sacrifice arrangement by changing the terms of your employee’s employment contract. Your [...]
For many years, the standard advice from accountants has been for Directors to pay themselves a salary and for shareholders to take dividends. Often in small companies, the Directors and Shareholders are the same people. This approach minimises the tax liability because dividends are taxed, or have been in the past, [...]
Information has been published by HMRC concerning the process for repaying VAT deferred by businesses during the first lockdown. To defer your payments, you will have to opt into the VAT Payment Deferral Scheme when it opens on 23rd February. We, as your agent, cannot opt into the scheme for you. [...]
If you are CIS registered and VAT registered, then from the 1st of March 2021 there will be changes to the way you account for VAT. This blog investigates these changes and what they mean for your business. The changes mean a VAT-registered business, which supplies certain construction services to another [...]
HMRC collected £1.4 billion in fines and penalties in the year to 31st March 2020. These are entirely avoidable penalties for late tax returns, unpaid tax etc. Companies House also collected millions in late filing penalties. To be forewarned is forearmed, so it is good to know the range and scope [...]
