The Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings (ATED) applies when a company (and certain other bodies) owns a UK residential property worth over £500,000. The charge applies for the year from 1 April, but the ATED return, and any payment due, must reach HMRC by 30 April within that period (i.e., by 30 April 2019 for 2019/20). This annual charge starts at £3,650 and increases, through valuation bands, up to £232,350 for 2019/20. The charge is based on the property’s value as at 1 April 2017, or the...

The end of the accounting period for your business is a key point for tax planning. You can save or delay tax by moving income and expenditure between accounting periods. For instance, advancing the acquisition of assets to just within your current accounting period will mean the capital allowances associated with those assets can be claimed earlier. The cost of qualifying assets which fall within the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) is given in full as a capital allowance in the year of...

Events don’t always turn out as expected. For example, you may need to wait for a later profit or loss to arise before you can judge whether it’s right to elect to change the tax treatment of an earlier transaction. This is why the law allows you extra time, after you have submitted your tax return, to submit a tax election or claim. The elections you may need to make by 31 January 2020 for the 2017/18 tax year include: • to set trading losses against your other income• to average the profits made...

For VAT periods beginning on and after 1 April 2019, most VAT-registered businesses will have to submit their VAT returns directly from some form of software, with no manual retyping of figures. All the VAT records also need to be kept in a digital format. This new approach to filing VAT returns and keeping records is part of the making tax digital (MTD) project, which will be expanded to include returns for all the main taxes in future years. For certain businesses, such as those that use the...

If you use your own car for a business journey, perhaps to travel to a customer, you can claim mileage expenses for that journey. Many employers pay the full tax-free amount of 45p per mile, which drops to 25p for miles in excess of 10,000 in one tax year. If your employer doesn’t pay the full rate, you can claim tax relief on the shortfall, either on your tax return or on form P87. You need to submit your claim within four years of the end of the tax year in which you made the business...

Most employees, with very limited exceptions, must be paid the National Minimum Wage (NMW) or the National Living Wage (NLW). These hourly rates vary according to the age of the worker, so it’s crucial to keep a sharp eye on the birthdays of your younger workers to ensure they are paid at the right rate for their age band. The second trap you can fall into is to ignore some of the hours worked. All overtime hours, time spent training, or standing in line for security checks, must be counted....

The 2019 Stockport Business Awards, organised and founded by Clarke Nicklin, are now officially open for entry. This year there are 13 categories for businesses in the borough to apply for, businesses can apply for as many as they like and its free to enter. See below the full list of categories. Business of the Year (over £5m) Sponsored by Handelsbanken (Headline Sponsor) Business of the Year (£1-5m) Sponsored by Gorvins Solicitors (Headline Sponsor) Business of the Year (up to £1m) Sponsored by...

If you are considering acquiring a new company car, take account of the changing tax incentives for electrics.The taxable benefit for having an electric company car is currently calculated at 13% of its list price when new, but this will rise to 16% on 6 April 2019. Strangely, from 6 April 2020 the taxable benefit for driving an electric company car will drop to 2% of its list price. Where a business buys a new electric car it can claim 100% of the cost as a capital allowance in the year of...

Companies which invent new production methods or products can claim enhanced tax relief for the Research and Development (R&D) costs. Small and medium sized companies can claim 230% of qualifying R&D costs, and a 14.5% payable tax credit if this extra deduction results in a loss! This is a very attractive relief and it’s really quite easy to claim. You can ask HMRC for an advance assurance that your company, and its R&D projects, will meet the requirements for R&D tax relief. We can help you...

The Government encourages individuals to make high-risk investments in small trading companies or charities byproviding Income Tax relief for investors in the following schemes (limits for 2018/19): • Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR): 30% relief on up to £1 million• Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS): 30% relief on up to £2 million• Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS): 50% relief on up to £100,000• Venture Capital Trust (VCT): 30% relief on up to £200,000 If you invest above £1 million...

Everyone has an annual exemption for Capital Gains Tax (CGT) of £11,700 for 2018/19. This is wasted if you don’t make capital gains in the tax year. You can’t carry forward any unused exemption to a different tax year, or transfer the exemption to another person. If you are planning to dispose of assets which will create capital gains, you can save tax if the disposals are spread over several tax years. This is easy to do if your assets can be split into separate chunks, like shares. Each sale...

What you need to know about the Spring Statement Economy The government’s efforts to build a stronger, fairer economy are paying off. The economy remains resilient, and is forecast to continue growing: • there have been nine consecutive years of growth, and the OBR has forecast further growth every year for the next 5 years• since 2010, the economy has grown faster than France, Italy and Japan• the OBR expects inflation to stay close to or on target for the duration of the forecast• business...

For many people the New Year prompts a review of their life goals. If you are wondering whether, or when, you should sell your business, a sensible first step is to form an outline plan for its disposal. The sale of a successful trading company will generate a capital gain, which would normally be taxed at 20% after deduction of your annual exemption (currently £11,700, increasing to £12,000 for 2019/20). Entrepreneurs’ Relief can reduce your tax rate to 10% on a gain of up to £10m. But there...

Buying property is always complicated, but now you must think about the different taxes you will pay on the purchase of properties located in Wales, Scotland, or the rest of the UK. In Wales, you will pay Land Transaction Tax (LTT), which starts at 3.5% for residential properties costing over £180,000 and has a top rate of 12% on the portion of the property price which exceeds £1.5 million. In England or Northern Ireland you will pay Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT). This starts at 2% for...

Individual landlords of residential properties are subject to restrictions on how much interest and finance costs they can deduct from rental income. In 2018/19 individual landlords are permitted to deduct just 50% of their interest and finance charges for tax purposes. From 6 April 2019 it reduces to just 25% and from 6 April 2020 all such finance costs will be disallowed. In place of the blocked interest the landlord receives a 20% tax credit to set against his Income Tax bill. This...

When you die, your executors or relatives need to sort out your affairs. This stressful task can be made easier if you leave a clear and up-to-date Will which has been drafted with tax in mind. They also need to pay Inheritance Tax (IHT) if the net value of your assets, including your home and any insurance policies that pay out to your estate on death, exceeds £325,000. Any wealth above this threshold bears IHT at 40%, or at 36% if at least 10% of your net estate has been left to charity. The...

You can save for retirement in a number of ways. The traditional route is via a pension scheme, but you could also use an ISA. Savers aged under 40 can open a lifetime ISA, and contribute up to £4,000 per year which attracts a 25% bonus from the Government. This bonus is withdrawn if the savings are accessed in circumstances other than used as a deposit for the saver’s first home, diagnosis of a terminal illness, or from age 60 onwards. The lifetime ISA savings are counted as part of the...

In the UK, everyone is taxed as an individual, but social security benefits, including Tax Credits and Universal Credit, are awarded on the basis of the family’s total income. Child Benefit is also withdrawn based on the income of the higher earner of a couple, irrespective of who claimed it. Families with an unequal distribution of income will often pay more tax than couples who earn just enough each to cover their basic Personal Allowance (£11,850 for 2017/18) and the basic rate band. The...

When you let rooms in your own home as residential accommodation, you can receive the rent tax-free if it falls within the limits for rent-a-room relief. This relief is currently capped at rents of £7,500 per year. Where more than one person receives the rent from the property, each person has a tax-free exemption for rent of £3,750. The conditions for rent-a-room relief stipulate that you must occupy the property as your main home – this relief can’t cover income from a holiday home or...

Giving to charity under Gift Aid can result in a win/win for both the donor and the charity. Making a Gift Aid donation will reduce your tax bill for the year in which the donation is made if your total income is above the 40% threshold (£46,350 for 2018/19). Taxpayers resident in Scotland can save tax with Gift Aid donations if their total income, including earnings, is above the 21% threshold (£24,000 for 2018/19). Alternatively, you can shift the tax benefit of some or all of that gift back...

If you are yet to reach State Pension Age (SPA), you will need to have accrued 35 complete years of National Insurance Contributions (NIC) to receive the full state pension. To receive any UK state retirement pension, you need at least ten complete NIC years.You can check how much state pension you are due to receive through your personal tax account on gov.uk. We can help you with this. It is possible to plug gaps in your NIC record by paying voluntary class 2 or class 3 NIC. This payment...

All interest you receive is taxable, unless it is from an ISA, but banks and building societies no longer deduct tax from interest paid to individuals. However, for most taxpayers the rate of tax payable on that interest is 0%, so no tax is in fact due. This zero tax rate applies where your savings income falls within your Savings Rate Band (SRB), which is worth up to £5,000, or within your Personal Savings Allowance (PSA), which is worth £1,000 for basic rate taxpayers or £500 for higher rate...

As you may be aware from April 2019 businesses above the VAT threshold (£85,000) will need to submit their VAT return through commercial software to be compliant with new HMRC legislation. You may already have cloud/compliant accounting software and ready for the changes that Making Tax Digital will bring. However, whilst you may have the basics covered, are you aware of what making better use of your software can do for you and your business to help you run more effectively and more...

If you have received a lump sum payment from your pension fund you may have had excess tax deducted from it. This happens, for example, because the pension provider tends to use an emergency PAYE code for the first payment you take from your fund. If you have had tax incorrectly deducted from a lump sum payment, you will get it back from HMRC if the pension scheme doesn’t refund it. However, there are several different claim forms, depending on the circumstances. We can help you with those...

The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) is specifically designed for young companies to raise relatively small amounts of start-up capital. The investors receive 50% income tax relief on the amount they subscribe for new shares, and those shares are exempt from capital gains tax (CGT) when they are sold after three years or more. There is no minimum amount the company may raise, and no minimum each equity investor is required to commit, but there are maximum limits. The company is...

The total amount of inheritance tax (IHT) paid to the UK Treasury increases by around 10% per year. This is largely due to rising residential property values and is frozen at £325,000 per person. IHT is payable at 40% above the nil band. If you have children (step or adopted children count) some IHT may be saved by leaving an interest in your family home to one or more of your direct descendants. Such bequests allow the residential nil rate band (RNRB) to come into play, which is currently...

The tax avoidance rules known as IR35 have been in force since April 2000. They are designed to prevent employers and workers from reducing their tax and NIC bills by placing a company structure between the worker and the employer. Unfortunately, it is difficult for HMRC to tell whether a small company has been inserted as an artificial step, or whether it is a genuine service business. If you operate through your own personal service company, you may need to prove to HMRC that your company is...

HMRC has long seen the construction industry as an area where tax avoidance is rife. The construction industry scheme (CIS) was imposed as a means to prevent labourers dodging tax on cash-in-hand payments. The latest dodge concerns VAT charged by labour suppliers to their customers, who are normally larger builders. The customer pays the VAT on the supply of labour, and reclaims the VAT as input tax on its VAT return. However, the labour supplier never pays the VAT over to HMRC, and often...

You don’t have to wait until the end of the tax year to reclaim any tax you have overpaid. It is now quite simple to do this through your online personal tax account (www.gov.uk/personal-tax-account). If you are still employed, your PAYE code should be adjusted so you receive your tax repayment as an addition to your next salary payment. However, young people who have worked during the summer to build up savings for university, may no longer have a job through which the tax repayment can be...

There is an overriding rule when claiming a deduction for the cost of clothing as a self-employed individual; the garment must be wholly and exclusively used for the purpose of your business. This is normally the sticking point with clothes – they are generally needed for warmth and decency, so the “exclusively” part of the condition fails. However, where the purpose of the clothing is to protect the individual or products, and the items are required to be worn in the work environment, the...

When you import from, or export to, countries in the EU, you generally don’t have to worry about VAT or customs duties. That may change when the UK leaves the EU at 11pm on 29 March 2019. It’s possible that the UK will leave the EU automatically by operation of the law (having triggered Article 50) with no withdrawal agreement in place. In that case the UK will immediately be treated as a third country in relation to the EU for all trading purposes, including for customs duties and VAT. For...

Businesses that sell digital services (eg, ebooks) to non-business customers in other EU countries need to account for the VAT due at the rate applicable in the country where the customer belongs. This rule currently applies to any amount of digital sales made, there is no de minimis threshold. The VAT charged to those overseas customers must be reported through the VAT MOSS system for each calendar quarter, unless the business is going to register for VAT in each separate jurisdiction that is...

Self-employed individuals pay two types of national insurance contributions (NIC); class 2 at a flat rate of £153.40 per year if annual profits are at least £6,205, and class 4 which is calculated as 9% of profits above £8,424, reducing to 2% of profits above £46,350. Class 2 NIC buys entitlement to the state pension and certain other benefits; class 4 NIC buys no such entitlements. The Government had proposed merging classes 2 and 4 NIC. The self-employed would pay one class of NIC, which...

The new making tax digital (MTD) rules will require most VAT-registered businesses to keep all their VAT data as digital records, and submit VAT returns to HMRC using MTD-compliant software. This will apply for VAT periods starting on and after 1 April 2019. In theory there should be no human cutting and pasting, or retyping figures, at any stage between the initial recording of the transaction and the submission of the VAT return. All transfers of data between different software packages...

If you have owned your commercial building for 20 years or more, you should review its VAT status. Such older buildings won’t have VAT attached to their sale or rent, unless the owner or leaseholder has opted to apply VAT, the so-called “option to tax”. So ask yourself these questions about your commercial property: • Have you ever made an option to tax on this property?• If you opted to tax, can you prove that? The evidence would be a copy of form VAT1614 and acknowledgment from HMRC.• If you...

The tax-free Personal Allowance will rise to £12,500 - The Personal Allowance – the amount you earn before you have to start paying income tax– will increase by a further £650 in April 2019 to £12,500. This rise comes a year earlier than planned, and will be maintained in 2020. This means a basic rate taxpayer will pay £1,205 less tax in 2019-20 than in 2010-11. A 2% digital services tax on large digital firms - From April 2020, large social media platforms, search engines and online...

The intended purpose of real time information (RTI) reporting of payroll data is to update universal credit accounts with individuals’ actual pay within days of their pay date. RTI reporting also allows employees to view their latest tax position through their online personal tax accounts. However, those accounts won’t be up to date if employers don’t report payroll data on time. HMRC should receive the full payment submission (FPS) report on or before the employees’ pay date, and automatic...

Employees who drive electric company cars can feel short-changed, as they charge-up at home, but don’t get reimbursed for the power used on business journeys. Now employers can reimburse drivers of electric company cars up to 4p per mile for each business mile driven since 1 September 2018, with no tax implications. What’s more, the company can allow employees to charge company or privately owned electric vehicles at the company’s premises for free, without incurring a taxable benefit. The...

There are now less than six months until the UK leaves the EU, and we still don’t know the terms of the withdrawal agreement. It is possible that the UK will leave the EU without a deal, which would have wide implications for many UK businesses. Whichever side of the leave or remain fence you stand, it is now essential that businesses prepare for the potential disruption which Brexit could bring. The European Commission has published detailed notices to advise businesses of the effects of the UK...

Last Thursday Clarke Nicklin organised the seventh Stockport Business Awards held at the iconic Stockport Town Hall. Over 350 people attended the black tie awards dinner to celebrate the success and achievements of the region’s finest. TV presenter, Jenny Powell, hosted the awards for the second year running and did a fantastic job of keeping the excited crowd quiet and engaged for those all-important moments. SignPost Stockport for Carers were this year’s Charity Partner and raised over £4000 in...

If your family receives Child Benefit and you are a high earner (£50,000 or more per year), you need to pay a special tax charge to claw back some or all of the Child Benefit received. It is your responsibility to tell HMRC that you need to pay the High Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBC), as HMRC’s computer systems can’t match up claimants for Child Benefit and their high-earning partners or spouses. HMRC did write to a number of taxpayers in 2013 to tell them about the HICBC, but your...

You may have borrowed assets or money from your company with the intention of repaying or making good the cost to the company in the future. If you make this repayment by 6 July following the end of the tax year in which you received use of the asset or money, no benefit-in-kind tax charge will apply for that tax year. The taxable benefits which can be effectively cancelled by this repayment mechanism are: non-cash vouchers, cars, vans, fuel for cars or vans, accommodation, credit tokens, and...

The VAT annual accounting scheme seems like a good idea, as you don’t have to submit quarterly VAT returns. Instead you pay your VAT by monthly or quarterly instalments during the year, and make a final balancing payment with a single VAT return for the whole accounting year. If you choose to pay monthly instalments, these will be set at 1/10th of your previous year’s VAT liability. Nine monthly payments are made (starting in the fourth month of your VAT year), plus a balancing amount for the...

If you receive a late filing penalty from HMRC, there is a one in three chance that it is wrong, and you can get it cancelled. We know that HMRC cancels more than a third of the penalties it issues each year; it says this is because the taxpayer has successfully claimed a reasonable excuse for late filing. However, a high proportion of the late filing penalties are issued incorrectly as the tax return was actually submitted by the set deadline. We are expecting the HMRC computer to issue a...

There is an important difference between expenses you incur while providing a service to your customer (e.g., travel costs), and costs known as ‘disbursements’, which you pay on behalf of your customer (e.g., MOT charge). If your business is VAT registered, you must add VAT to the amount of any expenses recharged to your customer, but you should not add VAT to genuine disbursements, where the customer remains responsible for the fee. There has been some confusion about whether the cost of online...

These are mileage rates which employers can use to work out how much to reimburse employees who use company cars for business journeys, but who have paid for the fuel used on those journeys out of their own pocket. The advisory fuel rates are reviewed by HMRC every quarter, with the new rates taking effect from the first of June, September, December and March. In view of the recent increases in the price of road fuel you would expect all the advisory fuel rates to rise, but they haven’t. The pence...

If you work on projects for larger businesses through your own Personal Service Company (PSC), both you and that larger business can save tax and National Insurance (NI) costs. Your savings arise if you extract funds from your PSC as dividends rather than as salary, and your customer saves employer’s NI by not paying you as an employee. The IR35 tax avoidance rules came into effect in April 2000 to prevent individuals from gaming the system and paying less tax by working through their own PSC,...

The institute of Chartered Accountants England and Wales have presented Graham Clarke with a certificate of recognition upon reaching 50 years membership. Graham Clarke, whose father was one of the original founders over 50 years ago is very much still an employee at Clarke Nicklin. Graham commented “I’m absolutely delighted to be awarded this certificate, being congratulated by the ICAEW wasn’t expected so a very welcomed surprise, my whole career has been with Clarke Nicklin, I’ve never even...

Convoluted tax avoidance methods are known as ‘tax schemes’. Back in 2000, a popular tax scheme was to receive pay from your job as a ‘loan’, on which there was no tax, and no National Insurance. The individuals who took part in these schemes were told they were 100% legal and the loan would be written-off on their death, so they would never have to pay tax on the loan. In reality, the money provided wasn’t a loan if it was never going to be repaid; it was a disguised form of remuneration.In...

Since 6 April 2017 you haven’t had to report income from trading or rents (property income) if the total amount received in each category is less than £1,000 per tax year, but there are conditions. The property income allowance can’t apply to rent from letting a room in your own home to a lodger. This source of rent falls under a different allowance called rent-a-room relief, which covers up to £7,500 of rent per year. The property income allowance is designed to cover letting of...

As a self-employed individual, you will be required to pay only one class of National Insurance Contributions (NIC) from 6 April 2019. Good news! But there is a catch. Currently, if your profits are below the small earnings threshold of £6,205 (for 2018/19), you don’t have to pay any NIC. But you can voluntarily pay Class 2 NIC of £153.40 (for 2018/19) to ensure the year counts towards your state retirement pension and other state benefits. Class 2 NIC is being abolished from 6 April 2019,...

We are pleased to announce we have further expanded our team with the appointment of Nathan Millar . Nathan, who joins the business as Accounts Senior, joins Clarke Nicklin having just moved back to the UK from Melbourne Australia. Nathan’s past experience included primarily looking after clients in the SME market space, ranging from individuals and sole traders up to corporate group structures. He also has experience in annual tax compliance and preparation of financial statements through to...

There are so many risks in business nowadays. You need to know your customer to check they aren’t trying to launder money through you, but you also need to know your suppliers to protect yourself from VAT fraud. If your supplier goes missing and deliberately fails to pay its VAT liability for taxable supplies in the UK, you could end up liable for the VAT. This can apply when you knew, or should have known, that a transaction was connected with VAT fraud. HMRC may refuse your claim for the VAT...

When you export goods to a customer in a country outside the EU, the sale is zero-rated for VAT if, and only if, seven different points of supporting evidence can show what went from A to B, what it was worth, how it moved, and who received it. The seven categories of evidence set out in section 6.5 of VAT Notice 703 are:• the supplier• the consignor (where different from the supplier)• the customer• the goods• an accurate value• the export destination• the mode of transport and route of the...

To receive Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) the pregnant employee must have been continuously employed by the same employer for at least 26 weeks up to and including at least one day in the 15th week (aka ‘qualifying week’), before the week in which the baby is due. The woman needs to be employed during those 26 weeks, but there is no rule to say she must be paid at a minimum rate for the entire period, or that she has to have an employment contract.To qualify for any SMP at all the woman must be...

The general rule is that food for human or animal consumption is subject to zero rate VAT. However, where food is supplied as part of a catering contract, standard rate VAT (20%) must be applied to the cost of all the food whether it is served hot or cold. This covers restaurant meals, and any prepared food to be eaten on the premises. Where the takeaway food is intended to be eaten hot, like fish and chips, VAT should be applied at 20%. Where the food is to be eaten cold (or at least ‘not...

Tax is going digital, just as sure as Brexit is happening. The first business transactions to be affected by this Making Tax Digital (MTD) revolution will be those relating to VAT. If your business is VAT registered, and your turnover is £85,000 or more per year, you will be required to submit your VAT returns using MTD-compliant software for quarters that start on and after 1 April 2019. You will also be required to keep the records from which the VAT return is derived in a digital form. This...

Clarke Nicklin, are the main sponsors and organisers of the Stockport Business Awards and founded the event six years ago. We can now announce the shortlist for the 2018 Stockport Business Awards. Over 80 Businesses entered the 12 categories this year and judging took place at Orbit Development’s Highbank House on Thursday 28th June. The judging consisted of headline sponsors representatives from Clarke Nicklin, Gorvins Solicitors and Orbit Developments. Representatives from Stockport Borough Council and...

We teamed up with food-focused multi-disciplinary business Foodsync, to host the first Stockport Food and Drink Awards which was held on Wednesday 20th June at Robinsons Brewery. The awards followed the first ever Stockport Food & Drink Trade Show which was held at Stockport Market place during the day. The after show party and awards gave guests the opportunity to carry on conversations with new contacts, and an opportunity to try tasters from various food and drink retailers from Stockport,...

As a VAT registered business, there are just two things you need to do to avoid a VAT penalty: pay your VAT on time and submit your VAT return on time. If you fail on either task twice within 12 months, you are put on the VAT equivalent of the naughty step. Businesses with a turnover of £150,000 or more do not get that one-time free pass, as they are put on to the VAT naughty step (aka: VAT surcharge period) after just one late payment, or late filing of a return. The surcharge period is a...

If your business has a workplace pension which complies with the auto-enrolment rules, that scheme must receive a minimum level of contributions on behalf of each employee who is enrolled in the scheme. This level of contributions is expressed as a percentage of the employee's pensionable pay. The rules of the particular scheme will define what pensionable pay is for each employee, as this can vary from scheme to scheme. For example, pensionable may be the amount paid between the NIC lower...

Stockport based chartered accountants and business advisors Clarke Nicklin have teamed up with food-focused multi-disciplinary business Foodsync, to host the first Stockport Food and Drink Awards on the 20th June. Clarke Nicklin who are organisers and main sponsors of the Stockport Business Awards have been working with Foodsync to support the first Stockport Food and Drink Trade show, giving food and drink businesses and suppliers the opportunity to connect to people producing great stuff...

The National Minimum Wage (NMW) rates increased for pay periods beginning on and after 1 April 2018. The rate for those aged 25 and over (also called the living wage) rose from £7.50 to £7.83 per hour, an increase of 4.4%. The three other NMW rates vary from £4.20 to £7.38 per hour, according to the employee's age. Individuals who are enrolled on an approved apprenticeship may be paid a reduced rate of £3.70 per hour for the first year of their apprenticeship, or while they are under the age...

Directors and employees sometimes borrow from their company, intending to pay the money back, but the actual repayment gets delayed. This can lead to a benefit in kind tax charge on the individual, and a class 1A NIC charge for the company. These charges can be avoided if the amount borrowed at any point in the tax year doesn’t exceed £10,000. If a greater amount is borrowed, there will be no tax charge if the individual has agreed to pay interest on the loan at a rate equal to or greater than...

You can pay your son or daughter from your business, but only if their pay is reasonable for the work that they do for the business. Don’t fall into the trap of paying over the odds for office assistance just because the worker is your relative. Tax inspectors tend to be suspicious of amounts paid to the owner's offspring, so you need to retain some supporting evidence of the work done. This is particularly important if the work is not performed at your business premises. In that case, ask the...

If you receive a pension or are paid a wage or salary, you should have a new PAYE tax code for 2018/19. It used to be issued in paper form, but now it may arrive electronically if you have activated your personal tax account at www.gov.uk/personal-tax-account. In that case, you will get a notification to go to your personal tax account and check your new PAYE code. Please do take the time to check it, as an incorrect PAYE code will mean you could pay too much or too little tax. The key items to...

We have teamed up with food-focused multi-disciplinary business Foodsync to host the first Stockport Food and Drink Awards on the 20th June. Clarke Nicklin who are organisers and main sponsors of the Stockport Business Awards have been working with Foodsync to support the first Stockport Food and Drink Trade show giving food and drink businesses and suppliers the opportunity to connect to people producing great stuff with passion and purpose; the aim is to bring those business closer to local...

When you let a spare room to a lodger, you are not only creating some extra income for yourself, but you are also increasing the availability of low cost accommodation. This is why the Government allows up to £7,500 of the gross rent you receive per year to be tax free under rent-a-room relief. That tax relief can also cover bed-and-breakfast arrangements, such as letting rooms by the night through sites such as Airbnb.com. However, in all cases, the letting must be of furnished residential...

New tax law places a requirement on the taxpayer to correct their past tax position in relation to tax due on overseas assets and transactions, rather than on HMRC to discover the facts. If you make the correction on or before 30 September 2018, and pay any tax due, you will face the normal level of penalties (up to 100% of the tax). If the disclosure is made after that date, the penalties can be up to 200% of the tax due and, in addition, you could be subject to additional penalties based on...

The most expensive piece of equipment most small businesses use is a car, but the Government generally doesn’t allow you to claim a deduction for the full cost of a car in the year of purchase. The acquisition cost of most cars must be spread over several years using Capital Allowances, the rate of which varies depending on the vehicle’s CO2 emissions. Cars with higher emissions qualify for a Capital Allowance deduction of 8% of the reduced cost per year, and cars with lower emissions qualify for...