Category: Self Assessment

sole traders to get second grant

SELF-EMPLOYED GET SECOND GRANT FROM GOVERNMENT

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Sole Traders to get second grant from the Government.

The government’s Self-Employment Income Support Scheme will be extended, giving more security to individuals whose livelihoods are adversely affected by coronavirus in the coming months, the Chancellor announced on Friday 29 May 2020. Rishi Sunak announced the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme will be extended – with those eligible able to claim a second and final grant capped at £6,570.

  • Individuals can continue to apply for the first SEISS grant until 13 July. Under the first grant, eligible individuals can claim a taxable grant worth 80% of their average monthly trading profits, paid out in a single instalment covering three months’ worth of profits, and capped at £7,500 in total. Those eligible have the money paid into their bank account within six working days of completing a claim.
  • Applications for the second grant will open in August. Individuals will be able to claim a second taxable grant worth 70% of their average monthly trading profits, paid out in a single instalment covering three months’ worth of profits, and capped at £6,570 in total.
  • The eligibility criteria are the same for both grants, and individuals will need to confirm that their business has been adversely affected by coronavirus. An individual does not need to have claimed the first grant to receive the second grant: for example, they may only have been adversely affected by COVID-19 in this later phase.

Further guidance on the second grant will be published on Friday 12 June and we will keep you up to date with the details when we know them.

See: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-a-grant-through-the-self-employment-income-support-scheme?utm_source=95036a42-e8c3-49f3-8f73-6300a69ea34a&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications&utm_content=immediate

1 Accounts Haverhill Capital Gains Tax advice when selling your house.

Capital Gains rules are changing!

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Capital Gains rules are changing!

If you are a property investor or “accidental” landlord this is the blog for you. From the 6th of April 2020 the changes to Capital Gains tax rules will affect the sale of second homes and rental properties.

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Capital Gains Tax

Capital Gains Tax is paid at the following rates:

  • 18% for the basic rate taxpayer
  • 28% for the higher rate taxpayer

The current rule means that if you sell your property in the tax year, you will pay your Capital Gains Tax in the January after it is declared on your tax return. The new rule means that you need to declare the sale to HMRC and pay the Capital Gain within 30 days of the sale. This will need to be carefully planned by unsuspecting landlords.

Get your house in order

No doubt, there will be penalties from HMRC with those who do not comply. We are keeping our fingers crossed that letting agents have informed their Landlords of these new changes.
If you are a property investor and are in the position where you have not declared your rental income, please take a look at our recent blog – “Have you received HMRC’s Love Letter?”

PPR relief

Other changes include PPR (Principle Private Residence) Relief. This is the relief that enables taxpayers to sell their homes without having to pay Capital Gains Tax. If you buy and move into a second home, the final period of exemption for PPR relief is going to be reduced from 18 months to 9 months.
This applies to Landlords that let privately. However, with the new rules starting in April and the restriction on mortgage interest, trading through a Limited Company could be the answer for property investors for the following reasons:

  • 19% Corporation Tax if you sell the property, rather than 28%.
  • Full tax relief on the interest of the loan

Pros & Cons

As with most things there are pros & cons. We can help you make informed decisions on how you want to invest and join the exciting world of being a Landlord. Despite HMRC doing their best to penalise Landlords, with the correct set up and letting partners, renting property can be very rewarding.

Don’t let the Christmas period get in the way of the Self-Assessment deadline!

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Don’t let the Christmas period get in the way of the self-assessment deadline!

Christmas is always a busy time of year, but for us it doesn’t stop after the festivities are over. With the Self-Assessment tax return deadline on January 31st, January is our busiest time of year.

A self-assessment tax return is required if you are a sole trader earning over the personal tax allowance, the director of a company who receives dividends, or if you have additional income which is not taxed through PAYE. If you are a client of ours on our Young Business service, Growing Business service, Rapid Growth service, or a sole trader then we take can care of this for you.

Send us your information early to avoid missing the deadline

Our clients on these services have the stress of completing their tax return taken away as we do a calculation to work out how much tax they owe and complete all the HMRC forms on their behalf. Once the tax return is approved by the client, we make sure it is filed with HMRC before the deadline.

As a firm, we try to prepare early by requesting all the information we need to complete your tax return at the end of the tax year on April 5th. This allows us to avoid the rush and get many tax returns in well ahead of the deadline. Our tax return clients will have received an email from us asking them to upload their documents to our secure platform. This platform is fully compliant with GDPR and data protection regulations, so there is no need to worry about your personal information!

We also send regular reminder emails throughout the year to make sure that all our clients don’t forget to send their documents to us on time. It is important to send us this information as early as possible as you can face a penalty from HMRC if you do not get us the required information in time for us to complete and file your tax return.

By sending us all the information we need before Christmas, you can relax over the festive period knowing that your self-assessment will be taken care of!

2018 tax reuturns

1 Accounts 2018 Tax Returns

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2018 Tax Returns

A note from Paul

This year has been really strange for me in preparing for January and completing over 160 Tax Returns in one month.  A Challenge that I was prepared for and it was 60 less than last year!

Today is 25 January and we have 9 left to do which hopefully will be down to zero by the end of today!

Waking up this morning I thought how on earth did we achieve this and how am I so chilled about it, I have come up with four key reasons that we have achieved our goals.

Building blocks spelling Tax

Practice manager

We employed my daughter Jade as practice manager during this year and next to Jenni, she is probably one of the only people that can sort me out.  Jade said that I was not going to do all the returns on my own this year and that we have to spread them around the team.

Jade has also worked relentlessly on getting our systems into place and her devotion to getting Karbon into a great working tool has been second to none.

Jade split the returns and shared the work load with all of the team.

Jade has seen the stress in past years that I have put myself under and wasn’t going to let it happen this year.  She is also in charge of onboarding and will not let the last minute “don’t want to pay” person take up our time.  Filtering out the clients that just do not work for us has been a real challenge for me to say no, but Jade has done this so well.

Apprentices

Over two years ago we invested our time and faith in the apprentice scheme and  this month I have seen both of our apprentices shine.  They have both gained level 3 of their AAT and have worked hard and learnt a lot this last month.

The rest of our team have all stepped up as well and really worked hard to reach our targets whilst getting on with their normal work load, all managed by Jade using Karbon.

Apprentice Grace
Apprentice James

Systems

For anyone that knows me, whilst I preach about systemising your business and put robust systems in place for our clients, I am the best person to mess my own up and go outside the system.

Karbon has been such a great system for us and we can all see our own progress during the month with regards to our work load and Jade has already planned year end accounts to the end of July!

Four months ago we changed our Tax and accounts software and have really tested this new software to the limits, and it hasn’t let us down.

Some people said why not change this in February when demand is not high, however the decision to really use it in anger during our busiest period has worked very well.  It is amazing how quickly a problem gets sorted out and we move on.

Business Coach

Yes we are business advisors and we do coach our clients as well as make there lives easier with great systems because life is too short to do your books.

In my opinion all businesses need a coach and we are no exception, I will write another Blog on our use of coaches and what to look for later; I did not think we needed our latest coach and she also thought we were well sorted by our very public image in our industry, how wrong we both were!

I use Heather Townsend of Accountants Millionaires (I am not one yet!!) and she has guided me in many ways, that until now (6 months later) I hadn’t really appreciated, sorry Heather.

Heather recommended our change in Tax and Accounts software, huge saving In monthly fees over £800 per month!  Insistence of investing in a practice management solution (Karbon).  Guidance on the issues of employing your daughter who is as strong headed and stubborn as me.

The guidance from her team and the ability to allow me to focus and empower my team is exactly what a coach should do.

Now looking forward to growing the business in 2019 and building on our fantastic dedicated team.