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in due course by the Universal Credit anyway so the Chancellor’s previous master stroke of phasing them out has been replaced by an even bigger master stroke of dropping the whole plan.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...
by admin | Nov 19, 2015 | Advisory, Amaranthine, Enterprise, Uncategorised
We recently attended a crowdfunding seminar hosted by Startup Direct and Paul Grant of the Funding Game. Simon, our Business Development Manager, was sent to make copious notes. So here’s his take on the Five Points of Calvinism. Err, sorry. Crowdfunding. Point 1: TALK Spend your time in this pre-prep phase generating contacts and talking to possible investors and buyers. This will serve two purposes: Your potential investors will feel more involved and in sync with your idea and vision. Then, when the time comes, they will be more likely to invest because this is their project, too. You’ll get a second opinion on your product or service. You may be working on false pre-suppositions about your target market and what they want. This will help you to find out more about the problem you are addressing. Point 2: UNITE This is where your real preparation takes place. You must drum up the promises you got from Point 1 and unite this into a sizeable committed line even before you launch your crowdfunding campaign. Your should have at least 40% of the funding for your round pledged before you begin your campaign. This will give your pitch more credibility when you launch because so many people have already chosen to invest in your idea. Point 3: LURE Reel ’em in! Use your campaign design to lure the remaining 60%, and never skimp on the work you put in before the campaign. A few things to keep in mind: Your message should be clear and simple, should have a summary of where you are, where you are going and what you need...
by admin | Nov 5, 2015 | Accounting, Advisory, Amaranthine, Enterprise, Finance
In a recent post (HERE) we looked at a Guardian Small Business article on choosing your accountant, and explained why Aiteo Consulting simply must have been in the author’s mind as she wrote. Now, if there is any truth to the chorus of complaint which often follows the words ‘I tried to speak to my accountant and…’, we might have to admit that in most minds, value and accounting services go together like blood and stones. So a recent article, published in the same august organ (HERE – if you must – but do wait until the end if you can), begins to grapple with the thorny question of getting value for money from your accounting services. Now, before launching into our analysis, we would like to say this. When a major accounting firm launches a new nationwide service targeted to small business, and the Head of the aforesaid service manages to write a clear problem statement for a national daily without it in any way coming across as an advertorial, we can only applaud. If you do look carefully, you’ll see that the author is indeed Head of Small Business Accounting for … well you can read the article to find out. After all they haven’t paid us to advertise on here! Credit where it’s due though, and we believe the article represents an excellent contribution to the debate about value. So let’s take a look at some of these themes. Entrepreneurs often pitch their businesses without knowing basic financial information. To be fair, an evening in watching Dragons’ Den wouldn’t be half as much fun without the...
