Last year the Chancellor announced the introduction of digital personal tax accounts., which will eventually replace the need to submit annual tax returns.

All personal taxpayers will have personal tax accounts by next year, as will over five million small businesses. This will allow them to have immediate access to their tax accounts so they should know the latest tax position and avoid year-end surprises.

From April 2018 all businesses, including the self-employed and landlords, will have to update their tax accounts every quarter where it is their main source of income or worth more than £10,000 per annum. How this will work in practice is as yet unknown.

This may not be a problem for VAT registered business as they already submit information quarterly or those using accounting software, but for small businesses that currently only have their accounts prepared annually this will be a big change which could be more onerous and costly.

It is also likely that once HMRC have access to quarterly income information they will want to bring forward the date tax has to be paid, which will affect business cashflow.

If you are worried about the impact on your business, or would like further advice, please contact us.

From April 2016 all workers who are 25 or over will be entitled to the new National Living Wage (NLW) of £7.20 per hour. If they are currently earning the minimum wage this equates to an increase of £975 per year. The NLW is planned to increase to £9 per hour by 2020.

Employers therefore need to review their business plans / budgets to ensure that they can fund the increase. All employers will need to decide whether they can increase prices or whether they will be forced to cover the increased costs themselves. If so will it affect the number of staff they are able to employ?

If you need advice or help with your planning, please contact us.

There is no avoiding it, Pensions Auto-Enrolment is coming and small business owners who employ staff need to plan now for how they will comply with the legislation.

We understand that employers with very few staff want to keep this process as simple as possible so we have teamed up with Creative Auto Enrolment to provide small business owners the peace of mind that they are fully compliant.

For a small monthly fee Creative will handle all the employee correspondence and submissions to the Pensions Regulator. There is a single pension plan with Scottish Widows so there are no investments decisions required.

Please contact us to find out more.