Steve J Bicknell Tel 01202 025252
Helpful Comments on Tax and Finance – Bicknell Business Advisers Limited www.bicknells.net
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 110,000 times in 2015. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
There are many Dark Forces that can destroy business but you can over come them.
As Yoda said
“Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one, a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. …Hmm? On what he was doing.”
If you want to your business to succeed you need to avoid these mistakes and Obi-Wan Kenobi won’t be your only hope
Here are some more great quotes from the new Star Wars Movie
steve@bicknells.net
HMRC are currently consulting on new rules to start in April 2016.
The consultation is focusing on Capital Gains Tax (CGT) ways to extract money from companies to create Target Anti Avoidance Rules (TAAR) covering:
Here are the examples of ‘problems’ HMRC want to resolve, Example 1 is ‘moneyboxing’ and/or ‘phoenixism’ and sometimes involves ‘special purpose vehicles’
Example 2 involves creating a holding company…
The consultation ends on the 3rd February 2016, the results are likely to be controversial!
steve@bicknells.net
You can only get tax relief on the cost of business journeys. These are when, as part of your job:
But business journeys don’t include:
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steve@bicknells.net
Most taxpayer find doing one return per year stressful enough but by 2020 anyone earning over £10k will be doing quarterly returns.
‘These changes are going to be very onerous,’ said Chas Roy-Chowdhury, of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.
‘It is not just about filling in a form, it is going to be a real burden.
‘Workers will have to make sure their books and records are up to date at least four times a year in case the taxman decides something is amiss and investigates them.’
Initially workers will not have to pay tax four times a year. But accountants suspect quarterly returns are a step toward this.
The plans were slipped out in the small print of George Osborne’s autumn statement. Around four million people will be affected: the self employed, small business owners and landlords who make more than £10,000 a year profit.
George Osborne said: ‘HMRC is making savings of 18 per cent in its own budget through efficiencies – in the digital age, we don’t need taxpayers to pay for paper processing, or 170 separate tax offices around the country.
‘We’re going to build one of the most digitally advanced tax administrations in the world. So that every individual and every small business will have their own digital tax account by the end of the decade, in order to manage their tax online.’
In order for this to work, small businesses will need to keep their accounts up to date.
The top 5 common accounting problems accountants deal with are:
1. Not doing any accounts – the shoe box approach to business
This is the most common mistake, book keeping is best done as you go along, putting all the paperwork in a shoe box or carrier bag is a really bad idea as you have no idea how your business is performing.
2. Not keeping receipts. Often small business miss out on claiming all their expenses because they fail to keep receipts and lose track of their spending
3. Not reconciling. Reconciling your bank statements to your cash book is vital to make sure that all of your income and expenses have been recorded in your accounts.
4. Using the wrong accounting system. For some businesses a manual cash book and records are fine but for many accounting software such as Debitoor will be needed to keep track of debtors, creditors and VAT. Make sure you understand your accounting system and operate it correctly.
5. Mixing business and personal expenses. Some sole traders even mix up business and personal bank accounts and in extreme cases don’t even have a business bank account. This can cause errors and often means that a sole trader will either claim to many expenses or to few.
Will small businesses be able to overcome these problems or will they end up in a tax mess with Digital Tax Accounts?
steve@bicknells.net
From April 2016 the new Personal Savings Allowance (PSA) will start.
The PSA will apply to all non-ISA cash savings and current accounts, and will allow some savers to receive a generous portion of their interest totally free of tax.
Its expected that 95% of savings will no longer be taxed.
Basic rate taxpayers will receive £1,000 in savings income tax free, higher rate taxpayers get a band of £500 and additional rate tax payers get nothing.
The current TDSI (tax deduction scheme for interest) will stop.
steve@bicknells.net
The Bank of England and HM Treasury have announced a two-year extension to the Funding for Lending Scheme.
The Bank and HM Treasury launched the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) on 13 July 2012. The FLS is designed to incentivise banks and building societies to boost their lending to the UK real economy. It does this by providing funding to banks and building societies for an extended period, with both the price and quantity of funding provided linked to their lending performance.
The FLS allows participants to borrow UK Treasury Bills in exchange for eligible collateral, which consists of all collateral eligible in the Bank’s Discount Window Facility.
The Bank and HM Treasury announced an extension to the FLS on 24 April 2013, which was amended on 28 November 2013, on 2 December 2014 and on 30 November 2015. This allows participants to borrow from the FLS until January 2018, with incentives to boost lending skewed towards small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
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Crowdfunders have also been able to access Funding for Lending via the Business Finance Partnership Program
steve@bicknells.net
Tax-Free Childcare will be available to around 2 million households to help with the cost of childcare, enabling more parents to go out to work, if they want to, to provide greater security for their families.
In summary:
You find more details at Gov.UK
steve@bicknells.net
According to Government figures, there has been a net increase of 146,000 businesses in the past year, taking into account all start-ups, closures, takeovers and mergers. It means more businesses have started than closed.
The Business Population Estimates also show the number of businesses that employ people has grown for the second year running, with 35,000 more at the start of 2015 than in 2014.
Small businesses continue to make up 99.3% of all businesses and generate over £1 trillion turnover for the UK’s economy.
Business Accountants (Association of UK Accountants) are Chartered Management Accountants (CIMA) and when you start your new business they are will tell you:
steve@bicknells.net
This year, 2015, we have had over 100,000 hits (48% up on 2014), which I think is amazing!
So I wanted to share the full details with you, see analysis below.
In total we have had 236,607 hits, we have 4,532 followers, there are 556 posts, most people find us using Google (over 80%). Thank you to all those who read my blog. Have a great Christmas.
steve@bicknells.net
