Work ON, not IN!
[Originally a guest post on www.owenjonesdesign.com] Introduction It is a real problem when you are doing something you love isn’t it? You set up your business because you are good at something, or you are passionate about it, or both, but you never seem to make progress. You are busy doing what you love, but somehow it’s not as rewarding as you’d thought it would be. Very often, that is because you are working IN, and not ON your business. What’s the difference? If you are going to reap the rewards of your hard work, then you’ll need to balance these two aspects. Before you can do that, you need to understand what they are. Working in the business This is basically doing the stuff for clients/customers that the business was set up to do. For Owen, this is producing high quality design ideas, and implementing them as part of…
A Government give-away (with conditions)
Introduction One of the goods things to come out of recent budgets is the new holiday for Employer National Insurance Contributions (“NIC”). The Employment Allowance allows small and medium enterprises (“SME”) to deduct up to £2,000 from their employer NIC payments. The details The holiday is worth up to £2,000 per annum. This starts on April 6th 2014, and must be claimed by qualifying employers. HMRC are expecting employers to take the deduction as early as possible, so many will see the benefit on 19 May 2014 (when the first payment is NOT made. You can only claim it once, even if you run more than one PAYE scheme. If you are part of a group, only one company can claim the allowance. Who cannot claim? The main exclusions are companies and organisations that provide “public sector” services. These include: NHS services General Practitioner services the managing of housing stock…