Month: March 2019

  • Are we leaving the EU?

    What can your firm do before 29 March 2019? As the clock continues to tick down to the 29 March 2019, when the UK is scheduled to officially leave the EU at 11pm, there is still much uncertainty around what Brexit will mean for UK business. What is certain is that it will bring change…

  • The politics of tax breaks

    How did we end up with such a complex system of tax reliefs? If there’s one thing accountants love, it’s identifying obscure tax reliefs to which you may be entitled and using them to reduce your tax bills. Tax reliefs, or tax breaks as they are sometimes called, aren’t without controversy, however. There are too…

  • Government launches service to prepare firms for EU exit

    The Government has launched a new website service to help businesses prepare for the UK’s exit from the EU later this month. ‘Prepare your business for leaving the EU’ is an online tool that provides information on specific rules and regulations, and aims to inform business owners of what is changing in their sector. The…

  • Making Tax Digital for VAT: one month to go

    The first batch of VAT-registered businesses have less than a month to go until they enter into the Government’s Making Tax Digital (MTD) regime. All VAT-registered businesses turning over more than £85,000 will be mandated into MTD by 1 October 2019, with the majority of firms adopting the scheme by 1 June 2019. Firms with…

  • Minimum contributions rise to 3% for employers in April

    Most employers in the UK will see minimum contributions towards their workers’ occupational pension schemes rise from 2% to 3% next month. Businesses are legally obliged to automatically enrol all staff aged between 22 and state pension age, and earning more than £10,000 a year, into a workplace pension. The first workers were automatically enrolled…

  • HMRC error hits early-paying self-assessment taxpayers

    HMRC admitted an error which saw hundreds of early-paying taxpayers wrongly issued with late-payment notices before the deadline for self-assessment tax returns. The deadline for 2017/18 self-assessment submissions and any tax owed came and went at midnight on 31 January 2019, with £100 penalties in place for not filing on time.