Accountancy Blog

Steps to shield your firm from threats.

Fraud costs the UK around £190 billion a year, with businesses bearing almost three quarters – £140bn – of those losses.

This worrying picture is backed up by the 2019 Fraudscape report compiled by anti-fraud body Cifas, which provides statistics for fraud committed by employees. The report read:

“Dishonest action by staff to obtain a benefit by theft or deception was the most common type of internal fraud in 2018, accounting for 46%. The most prevalent form of dishonest action during the year was theft of cash from the employer.

“The second most common fraud type was theft of cash from a customer, which rose to 22% in 2018 compared to 17% in 2017.”

Fraud can be characterised as rule-bending, but for businesses struggling to manage cashflow it can have catastrophic effects. More…

Business groups want more support to help employers meet the Chancellor’s pledge to raise the national living wage to £10.50 an hour by 2024.

Chancellor Sajid Javid announced his intention to implement the hike alongside lowering the age threshold for those who qualify for the living wage from 25 to 21.

The national living wage hourly rate for over-25s in 2019/20 stands at £8.21 – but more than 6,000 UK employers currently             go further than the legal minimum.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) welcomed the Chancellor’s announcement, albeit with caution.

Adam Marshall, director-general of the BCC, said:

“Companies already face significant cumulative employment costs, including auto-enrolment, the immigration skills charge and the apprenticeship levy.

“Action must be taken to alleviate the heavy cost-burden facing firms, or risk denting productivity and competitiveness.” More…

The Treasury’s take from stamp duty land tax fell by the largest amount since the start of 2008/09, government figures show.

In England and Northern Ireland, HMRC collected £11.94 billion in stamp duty receipts on completed property or land purchases in 2018/19 – a 7% decline on the previous tax year.

That represents the biggest drop since the peak of the recession in 2008/09, and was largely fuelled by a 10% fall in residential stamp duty receipts.

The Revenue puts that down to the introduction of a stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers and devolution of the property tax to Wales, which has been setting its own rates since 1 April 2018. More…

Plans to remove the employment allowance for large employers from April 2020 could impact on smaller firms.

This allowance provides employers with a reduction to their national insurance contributions (NICs) bill of up to £3,000.

Employers that claim the allowance can carry it forward from one tax year to the next, but that will stop from April 2020.

From that point, employers will only be eligible for the allowance if their total secondary class 1 NICs liability for the previous year is less than £100,000, while the allowance has also been reclassified as state aid.

Smaller employers may face issues due to the maximum amount of de minimis state aid they can receive in any three-year period. More…