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Accountancy News

Please find below all the articles that have been categorised as 'Accountancy News'.

Don’t get a Tax Hangover from your Christmas Party

While some might complain about Christmas paraphernalia popping up in the shops earlier and earlier each year, the tax-savvy will tell you that planning ahead for the Christmas party is vital if you want to avoid giving HMRC an unplanned and costly gift.

 

The annual celebration is a time to relax and to toast the successes of the year.

And it is perhaps an opportunity to get reacquainted with colleagues on a more personal basis, after a year of simply nodding to them on the way in…

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Landlords Tax Reform

Once the dust has settled on what was a radical far reaching budget by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, one of the more unexpected changes was the reform that will be brought in to change the way that property landlords will be taxed in future.  There were several changes which we will examine in this blog

Tax relief on mortgage interest

Currently where a loan or mortgage is taken out to purchase, or renovate an investment property full tax relief…

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Unpaid Self Assessment Tax Surcharge Imminent

If you have not made arrangements to settle your outstanding self-assessment tax, which was due for payment on 31 January 2015, penalties could be levied by HMRC.  In order to avoid a 5% surcharge being levied on your balancing payment for 2013/14, payment will need to be made no later than 2 March 2015.  HMRC is taking a very stringent approach with taxpayers with little clemency for late payment. The easiest method to settle the outstanding tax is via…

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VAT Benchmarking

HMRC are currently writing to around 7,500 furniture retailers and car repair businesses asking the owners to check the figures reported on their VAT returns. If you receive one of those letters, don’t panic. HMRC do not believe your VAT return is wrong, they are just asking you to double check your sales and purchase figures.

The HMRC letter asks you to work out your VAT mark-up ratio by comparing the difference between your sales and purchases (i.e. gross profit),…

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Supporting the Sick

It is such a pain when a key employee is off sick. You are required to pay that person statutory sick pay (SSP) once he or she has been absent from work for four days. To add insult to injury you can’t reclaim any of the SSP paid since 6 April 2014. Payments of SSP made for periods before 6 April 2014 can be reclaimed from HMRC where the SSP exceeds 13% of the class 1 NI paid to HMRC for the month.

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RTI Reports and Penalties

Real time information (RTI) was supposed to make the reporting of PAYE easier for employers, but it has introduced more filing deadlines, and new penalties for missing those deadlines.

Every employer must now send a full payment submission (FPS) report every time they pay employees, on or before the payment date. There is some relaxation for certain employers who have fewer than ten employees.

If no payment has been made to employees in the tax month…

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Solicitors disclosure

As a qualified solicitor you need to be very careful not to make mistakes on your tax returns, as a tax investigation could do serious harm to your professional reputation. Taxpayers who make deliberate errors that lead to tax underpayments of £25,000 or more, may have the details of their name, address, amount of tax avoided and penalties paid, published on the internet by HMRC.

HMRC are currently targeting solicitors who have omitted income from their tax returns, and at the same time are offering a chance for solicitors…

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Shared parental leave and pay

Where a child is due to be born (or adopted) on or after 5 April 2015, its parents will be entitled to share the 52 weeks of maternity leave and 39 weeks of maternity pay or maternity allowance which is currently available only to the mother. This ability to share parental leave and pay will not apply in Northern Ireland until the Northern Ireland Assembly passes the relevant regulations.

As an employer you need to be ready to deal with claims from employees to share leave and pay, and…

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Incorporation of a business

When a business incorporates and transfers its trade and assets to a company controlled by the seller, the assets must be transferred at open market value for tax purposes. The assets may include “goodwill” which is defined as the business reputation or customer relationships, including the value of continuing contracts.

The transfer of the assets may generate a taxable capital gain in the hands of the seller, as the assets will have appreciated in value during the time they were used or created by the first business.

Capital gains tax…

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VAT Moss new guidance

On 1 January 2015 the VAT law changed for electronic services that are supplied digitally to non-business customers. Those customers must now pay VAT on the e-service at the rate that applies in the country where they receive the service. It’s up to the supplier to work out the VAT due, and pay that VAT to the local tax authority. There is no minimum threshold of sales below which VAT is not due.

The UK has set up the VAT-MOSS system to collect and pay over the overseas VAT…

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