Insight

Brad leads our bookkeeping and VAT compliance team. This month, he secured refunds of over £2,700 for two clients; he’ll nag you to maximise your refunds as well, so why not give him a call and see how he can help you.

Two clients were on the brink of retirement. By making a terminal loss claim for their last year of trading, Adam and Andy have saved them over £6,400 in corporation tax. This makes their retirement just that little bit better.

Sometimes, accountants can be too pessimistic. Steve spent part of last week revising cashflow forecasts for a major client, with the positive outcome that cash should be much less tight over the next 12 months. The rolling 12-month forecast is updated every month, so we hope to see even better news as the year progresses. If you need to know how your cashflow is going to look in 12 months (and who doesn’t?), get in touch and we can help you plan for success.

Steve saw a new client last week, who is being chased by HMRC for a late tax return. Between them, they worked out a program of work, and an affordable payment plan, so the work can be completed well before the fines increase at the end of July. If you have held back on getting your accounts done through fear of a large accountancy fee, we can help spread the cost.

Steve had a skype meeting with a client based in Exeter. This new business has a bright future, but needed a wide-ranging discussion about pensions, funding, how to approach potential and existing customers about new projects.

Following on from a detailed tax planning review, we are delighted to have been able to implement a strategy which has enabled our client to save £240,058 in combined Corporation & Income Tax.

Although the proposed roll out of Making Tax Digital was recently removed from the Finance Bill, it is very much believed that this was a political measure as part of the upcoming General Election, and will swiftly be added back in once we find out which party is elected. After all, why would the government need to budget for something if it didn’t exist?! Making Tax Digital (“MTD”) will begin its roll out from April 2018, with the objective of having all businesses, including the self-employed and landlord, maintaining digital records of the finances and sending quarterly summaries to HMRC. There are exemptions from joining MTD, but these are very limited. Overall, we would expect all our clients to prepared to begin digital reporting from their deemed start date. The key question is…… When will this affect you? This is all dependant on your circumstances, but we have set out…

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One client hadn’t noted that a supplier was now VAT registered, and as a result had missed out of claiming over £8.5k in VAT through their VAT returns. We’ve tidied this up for them, and they were over the moon.

HMRC are quick to levy penalties, usually on a “computer says penalty” basis. One client received a penalty amounting to 40% of an unpaid tax bill. On appeal we were able to remove this penalty entirely.

Our client thought they did, but when Andy reworked the numbers he spotted that they were 22% out on their figures, meaning that the business owners wouldn’t actually be able to pay themselves each month. The business had been leaking funds for 6 months, which had resulted in all of the cash reserves being significantly reduced. As a result of our review the client has been able to update their business plan, and set their team new targets to ensure they are actually breaking even (at worst) each month.