Welcome To Tax Accountants London
We pride ourselves on being a leading independent firm of Chartered Accountants and Tax Advisors, providing clients with practical and realistic business advice. Not only are we committed to a high standard of service in accounting and taxation matters, we aim to provide our clients with information that may be important to the running and development of their businesses through advice on a wider basis, helping them to achieve greater efficiency, profitability and cost reductions.
With specialised consultants and professional staff, our clients are located in and around the Manchester area. Our aim is to provide comprehensive, Fixed Fee accounts and taxation services to small and medium sized businesses; this includes family owned companies, contractors, partnerships and sole traders.
Choosing a Current Account to Make the Most of Your Money
There are practically endless possibilities when it comes to choosing your current bank account in the UK. Since the financial market in the UK is a very developed one, there will be a large variety of decisions you need to make when choosing your current account. Nevertheless, whether you are looking for your first current account or you want to switch your bank, the most important thing to pay attention to are the current account fees.
The surveys carried out on the market reveal the fact that the more than 80% of current account holders would switch their bank if charges were introduced on the current accounts. There are multiple bank products that offer free of charge services and the majority of banks and financial institutions will help you choosing the right account for your needs.
Many of the accounts offered by the banks these days can be adapted to your personal circumstances. For instance, for those who have just left school, there are current accounts suitable for their needs. This also happens in the case of students and recent graduates. The overdraft facility of an account is an important factor to consider, because this facility can be very useful to help you with any short- term cash flow requirements.
The majority of the banks offer Euro current accounts for those who want to hold their money in Euros and avoid the fluctuations of the exchange rates. For parents who want to open an account for their children, there are multiple banks where they can do this.
Make sure the current account you choose offers you all the facilities you may need, such as debit card, cheque book, direct debits and standing orders. If you want your account to be a joint one, you need to make sure the bank you select offers this facility as well.
A good way to choose a bank account that is suitable for your needs is to compare the different offers of several banks. You can easily do this online, by visiting the websites of the banks or by making use of the account comparison tools that are available on the Internet. This way, you will be able to compare numerous bank accounts in a matter of minutes and it will be easier for you to make a decision. Alternatively, you can always make appointments with a number of high street banks to find the best deals available.
Tax and the Small Business
Tax Accountants London – Business Tax Advice
Even though Sir Winston Churchill stated that “there is no such thing as a good tax”, very few of us in our society are completely exempt from having to pay them in one form or another. All business is subject to taxation and small businesses in particular find that they are often seemingly swamped by a vast amount of tax legislation on a regular basis.
There are obviously taxes that a business owner pays that are not particular to being the owner of a business, but along with these there are also some that apply just to them, so which are they?
Business Rates
Although not a tax in name, business rates act in exactly the some way; all businesses have to pay rates on their premises in the same way and for the same reasons that we pay council tax on our homes.
What you pay in business rates is down to the ‘ratable value’ of your business premises, which in turn is based on an estimation of the market rent and has to be re-valued and up-dated every five years. The ‘Small Business Rate Relief Scheme’ could reduce your business rates if your business’ ratable value is less than £15,000.
Corporation Tax
HMRC requires all UK Limited Companies to pay ‘Corporation Tax’ on their ‘taxable’ profits. This only applies to Limited Companies and is a sort of Income Tax for Limited Companies.
PAYE
You do not get to escape the joys of Income Tax simply because you are a business, in fact, if you employee staff, you will have the added joy of dealing with the payment of their Income Tax to HMRC. PAYE (Pay As You Earn), is the system used by employers, whereby they deduct Income Tax directly from their employees’ wages or salaries and pass it on to HMRC.
National Insurance
As well as the deduction Income Tax directly from an employee’s pay, employers are also responsible for the deduction of their staff’s National Insurance contributions at source, which are passed on to HMRC along with other taxes.
Value Added Tax
All UK businesses that have registered for VAT, which they must do if their turnover has reached, or is expected to reach within a month, the VAT threshold, (currently £70,000) have to add VAT to the sale price of most goods and/or services they provide. Some goods and services are either exempt or zero-rated and VAT need not be charged on these, but it must be added to most.
Capital Gains Tax
If all the taxes you are subject to are getting the better of you as a business owner, you may choose finally to sell your business and move on, yet even at this point you cannot completely escape taxation; Capital Gains tax is collected on gain or profit made on anything sold or given away, and so disposing of your business will probably find you paying yet more tax.
Although it may sometimes seem like a never-ending list of payments to make, try to remember that without taxation we couldn’t fund our society, we may not always agree on the size of our tax bills, but most of us in business resign ourselves to taxation as an inevitable fact of everyday business life.
The UK National Minimum Wage – A Brief Employer’s Guide
Tax Accountants London – Accounting Payroll
Since the 1st of April 1999 all workers in the United Kingdom have been subject to the National Minimum Wage Act; this act of parliament set a national minimum amount that employers in the UK must pay their employees; it is also the minimum amount that workers in the UK are allowed to tender their services for. Workers can, of course, earn more than the UK minimum, but never less.
The introduction of the National Minimum Wage Act was intended to protect UK workers from exploitation, and almost all UK workers are now entitled to the UK minimum. All adult workers over the age of 22 must currently be paid, (as of October 2009), a minimum of £5.80 per hour, for 18-21 year olds this drops to a minimum of £4.83 per hour and for those teenagers under 18, who have left school and are working, there is a UK minimum wage of just £3.57 per hour.
Although almost everyone is entitled to a minimum wage in the UK, there are some workers who are not, these include: self-employed people, company directors, volunteers, voluntary workers, apprentices under 19 years of age, members of the armed forces, share fishermen and prisoners. Workers enrolled on certain government schemes or doing work experience also fall outside of the act.
If you are an employer the hours that you must pay your employees for are also covered by the act, but vary depending on the type of work your employees are doing; for NMW purposes there are actually four ‘types’ of worker:
‘Salaried-hours’ workers have a contract that states the minimum amount of hours they will be paid for each year and are paid an equal installment of this salary usually on a monthly basis.
‘Output Workers’ do not have fixed working hours and are paid a commission for each task performed or product produced; this is sometimes referred to as ‘piece work’.
‘Time Workers’ is the term that encompasses both part-time and full time workers and describes employees who are paid according to the time they have worked.
Finally ‘unmeasured workers’ are paid either a set amount for working a certain length of time i.e. per week or for a set task.
Paying the correct taxation is not the only reason that you will need to have a very good record keeping system in place if you are an employer, keeping sufficient records to satisfy HMRC as regards your payment of the minimum wage is something you have to do by law and so enlisting your accountant to provide training and guidance on the sort of records you need to keep is no bad idea; also remember that the records must be stored for an absolute minimum of three years and should include all workers’ dates of birth, to enable HMRC to check the minimum wage rate that the employee should have received, copies of every contract and any update or amendment made, a record of employee absences, shift patterns, overtime worked and details of every payment to every worker.
It you have staff and you are at all concerned about how the National Minimum Wage effects what you pay, speak to your local HMRC office and take advice from your accountant, you can never be too well equipped when it comes to good information.
Small Business Time Management – How to Make Best Use of Your Time
Accountants in London – Time Management Tips
No business owner ever has enough time in the day to do everything they need to do, and for the small business owner who may have little in the way of staff to assist them, and may even be juggling everything alone, the ability to prioritise is an essential skill.
Becoming drawn into new, pressing issues as they arise and getting dragged away from the job in hand is an inevitable part of business ownership, but leaving a sea of unfinished jobs in your wake is something that you simply cannot afford to let happen.
What is needed is planning and lots of it, whether you are trying to cope on your own or have the help of others, it is important to know what has to be done each and every hour of every working day.
A good system is to make a list of tasks for the day and to score them on your list from 1 to 4 in order of priority so that you can see at a glance which tasks take priority over others, try to do this as honestly as possible; however tempting it is to rank the things that you like doing higher than those you dread, the list needs to reflect accurately how important each job is.
Once you have prioritised, you will need to allocated chunks of your time to each task, this will help you dedicate yourself to each job for a period of time without jumping to something else and leaving things unfinished. Remember to allow some flexibility in your plan for unexpected events; although no one can plan completely for the unknown, it is wise to try to factor it in.
Next ensure to keep the plan logged in an accessible, visible place, if you work best with paper, have a wall chart planner or desk diary in plain view, if you prefer technology an online diary or spreadsheet may suit you better, as long as where ever your plan exists it remains with you throughout your day.
Wasting time is very easy to do, a couple of over-long phone conversations and an hour spent chewing over a few ideas you had the previous evening and you could find yourself well off schedule for the day; if you are prone to letting time melt through your fingers employ deadlines to keep you on track. Fix the deadlines in place and remind yourself of what will happen if you miss them; financial loss is often a strong incentive.
Above all, however many ‘urgent’ matters compete for your attention throughout the day it is vital to hold fast to your plan. Insisting on an attempt to keep all of the balls in the air at once will not make you a hero; focus is the business owner’s best friend, so, pick a task, concentrate on its conclusion and do not allow anything bar a forced evacuation of your work place to divert you.
Small Business Accounting – How to Please the Tax Man With Your Great Record Keeping
Accountants London – Small Business Accounting
Small businesses in particular are prone to being stretched for time, knowledge and resources, with often just a sole trader or partnership having to take on the entire workload, as well as everything that comes with the running of a business. It is hardly surprising then that the quality of the accountancy records sometimes takes a bit of a back seat.
If, on top of this you are also very new to business, it could be that you are, in addition, struggling with a learning curve as steep as an Olympic ski run. Finding out exactly what is expected of your record keeping can be a little tricky, mostly because you will be keeping the records for a variety of different people, all of whom probably need something slightly different from them, so, it helps then, if you work out the most important people to please and aim to make them happy.
Regardless of what sort of business you have, the fact is that you will most likely need your records to ensure that you are paying the correct amount of tax; no one wants to pay more than they need to, and under paying could land you in a whole heap of trouble.
So how does one keep a set of records that will bring a smile to HMRC’s figurative face? Well, there are a few simple principles to follow that will at least take you some of the way to getting it right.
It should go without saying, (but it rarely does), that all records should be presented professionally. Keep them clean and tidy and clear and concise. HMRC are nothing if not impressed by neat records.
Do not struggle on alone with things that only a professional can help with; the advice of a professional accountant, especially in the early years of a business’ life can be invaluable and for understanding and explaining the complexities of UK Tax Law, there is no one else who can really help in the same way; most accountancy professionals also have a good working relationship with the Tax Man and can communicate with them in a way that will cut out the need for an interpreter; so, make engaging an accountant a priority.
Use either a good accounting software package or an online accounting system. Having the sort of instant access to information that these systems provide will make things very much easier should the Revenue ask for particular facts; being able to provide the relevant information quickly and clearly will certainly endear you to HMRC.
Keep hard copy back-up in the form of bank statements, receipts and cheque book stubs, in case they are required, but store them in easily accessible, well ordered files; if they are requested, having to hunt around a damp garage to find a few stained, mouse-chewed bits of paper, is not only a pain, but handing this sort of incomplete information over will definitely earn you a black mark, or two.
Ensure that all information is accurate and complete. It may sound obvious, but forgetting to record a transaction or logging something incorrectly will portray you and your business as, at the very least sloppy, at worst corrupt, in the eyes of the Tax Man, so make sure you are careful to get it right.
Ultimately, although HMRC are there to collect taxes from your business, they are not your enemy; if you are helpful and professional in your dealings with them, they will respond far more favourably than if you are hostile and obstructive; just like you the Tax Man (and woman) in all their guises are only human after all.