HM Revenue and Customs has sent notices to tax avoidance scheme users to pay over £250 million of disputed tax under the Accelerated Payments regime introduced in this year’s Finance Act. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, David Gauke, told MPs scrutinising the National Insurance Contributions Bill that over 600 Accelerated Payment notices had […]
Are your workers employed or self-employed
There can be savings, particularly for employers, if a worker can be paid as a self-employed person. This is particularly so in the construction industry where most workers are engaged by contractors as self-employed subcontractors. What many contractors fail to realise is that they are required to reach a judgement on a worker’s tax status […]
What is the statutory minimum holiday entitlement?
Paid annual leave is a legal right that an employer must provide. Almost all workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday per year (known as statutory leave entitlement or annual leave). An employer can include bank holidays as part of statutory annual leave. Self-employed workers aren’t entitled to annual leave. Most workers who […]
Pay when you are paid
Apart from the retail trade and internet traders most of us send an invoice when we provide our goods or services to customers and then wait for the period of credit to expire before we get paid. During this waiting time we still have our own bills and wages to pay so the working capital […]
Reclaiming pre-registration VAT input tax
If you have been trading for some time before you register your business for VAT don’t forget to consider your option to reclaim VAT on goods and services purchased prior to your registration date. For example, if you are required to register for VAT from 1 January 2014, you only need to pay VAT on […]
Clamp-down on use of hybrid mismatches
The government has announced a clamp-down on the decade-long use of ‘hybrid mismatches’, a technique commonly used by multinational companies to significantly reduce their tax bills. It is the latest in a series of steps the government has taken to tackle aggressive tax planning and is expected to bring tens of millions of pounds per […]
Construction industry tax penalties
If any of your Construction Industry (CIS) returns are filed one day late, HMRC will charge an initial fixed penalty of £100. Additionally, if they have still not received that return: two months after the date it was due, they will charge a second fixed penalty of £200 six months after the date it was […]
Flexible Pensions To Go Ahead In 2015
The Chancellor announced, in his March 2014 Budget, that there would be significant changes to allow individuals to have greater access to their pension funds from 2015. The proposed changes have now been consulted and the Treasury have published the outcome, together with draft pensions legislation, enabling the new flexible regime to commence on 6 April […]
Understanding the new State Pension
This month sees the launch of a new service that provides a personalised written estimate of what you can expect to receive under the new State Pension system. This will be based on your work history and National Insurance (NI) contributions to date. Initially, the estimate will be available to the approximately 2.5 million people […]