Monthly Archives: April 2019

The following notes set out some of the factors you will need to consider if you are considering employing members of your family, younger workers or volunteers in your business. If you hire family members you must: avoid special treatment in terms of pay, promotion and working conditions make sure tax and National Insurance contributions […]

For most of us in business the recent, and continuing, Brexit fiasco has meant that making meaningful investment decisions has proved to be problematic. What will our future trading relationship with Europe look like and how will that affect our own trading results? And yet in the UK we have an extremely generous tax allowance, […]

If you personally disposed of an asset that is subject to a capital gains tax (CGT) charge, at any time during the tax year ending 5 April 2019, any CGT due will need to be paid 31 January 2020. Accordingly, if you know the amount of the taxable gain, and the amount of CGT payable, […]

The first Debt Relief Order (DRO) was approved 10 years ago in April 2009 with the aim of assisting people with small levels of assets and little surplus income deal with their debts*. Since then, the Insolvency Service has approved more than 254,000 DROs to people with debts worth an average of £9,400. People apply […]

The government has given the green light to allow pension providers to create user-friendly services that display pension information for individuals on-line. Savers will be in the driving seat with all the facts and figures about their pensions and potential retirement income at their fingertips in one place for the first time – on smartphones, […]

Since April 2017, you can earn £1,000 from a trading activity and £1,000 of property related income, without being liable to income tax. These tax-free allowances on property and trading income are useful as families can generate an extra £2,000 a year of income without increasing their tax bills. Obviously, these small amounts will not […]

There are three things that you can count on that HMRC will do: Calculate the amount of tax you owe based on the information they have gathered. Chase you for payment of this tax if not recovered by PAYE. Pursue you if they believe you have under-declared your taxable income or made excessive claims to […]

Sole traders If you are self-employed, and obliged to submit a self-assessment tax return, you must keep your tax records for at least five years after the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year. For example, if you submit your 2018-19 tax return online on or before 31 January 2020, you must keep […]

The following comments were written on the 13th March 2019 immediately following Philip Hammond’s presentation of the 2019 Spring Statement to Parliament. In theory, the government uses the Spring Statement to respond to the most recent forecasts made by the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR). However, what follows is a short summary of the points […]

The last few weeks have seen some of the most extraordinary political manoeuvrings in the UK parliament, and as we complete the edit of this article, the EU parliament seems to have given us a few extra weeks to complete the withdrawal agreement and get a final draft agreed by parliament. The formal statement issued […]