by admin | Feb 1, 2016 | Accounting, Advisory, Amaranthine, Enterprise, Finance, Professional
Careful readers of our blog will have noticed, among the various important updates on topics such as security, budgets, and happy Christmases, an emerging theme has begun to … errm … emerge. In an earlier post (HERE), we picked up the gauntlet thrown down by our professional counterparts at KPMG and explained why Aiteo Consulting must be the accounting firm you are looking for. It’s definitely worth a read, and not simply because the Guardian Small Business Network described it as a ‘masterclass in blog writing’. @AiteoConsulting A masterclass in blog writing, well done! — GuardianSmallBiz (@GdnSmallBiz) October 23, 2015 In a follow-up post (HERE), which we can now designate as the second of a slowly developing trilogy, we introduced to you the idea of getting value for money out of your accountant – a task many find slightly more difficult than getting blood out of a stone. Your accountant should play the role of your finance director and should be central to your business. But what does that mean in practice? And if you hire us, how would we do it? So we come to the final step, and here’s hoping that, unlike the slightly more famous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, we don’t actually end up with five instalments. So let’s talk about value. Value means different things to different people (diffr’n’t strokes for diffr’n’t folks and all that). And in order to deliver you a service that you value, we need first to work out together what you’re looking for and tailor our service accordingly. In order to do this effectively and efficiently, there is...
by admin | Nov 26, 2015 | Advisory, Enterprise, Fugacious, Professional
With the dust settling on the first Autumn Statement to feature a quotation from Chairman Mao’s little red book, practitioners and laypeople alike have been scouring George’s blue book for elephant traps. Here’s our take: Working Tax Credits – public finances ride to the rescue The OBR has forecast an improved position in the public finances, giving the government the wiggle room it needs to drop its widely unwelcome plans to bring in an early phase-out of Working Tax Credits. WTCs will be replaced in due course by the Universal Credit anyway so the Chancellor’s previous master stroke of phasing them out has been replaced by an even bigger master stroke of dropping the whole plan. A lucky Chancellor indeed. Boom! A big hit for big business Big business will pay the cost of an ‘Apprenticeship Levy’. The Treasury’s blue book suggest that the take from this will be a whopping round £3bn rounded up. To put that in perspective, that’s a whole 7% of the existing Corporation Tax take. But this is not a tax rise. Oh no. It’s a LEVY. (We hope you can see the difference too.) In the round, the levy will apply to larger firms with an annual payroll of greater than c. £3m. But as with other stealth taxes we think big business will take a little while to come to terms with the stomach punch they’ve received. Woah! A near thing for small businesses There is a complete muddle at the moment between the intersection of travel & subsistence rules, intermediary legislation, employment status and close company rules on dividends. From the Treasury’s populist perspective, tax avoiders are hiding...
