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So, when you sign up with an accountant one of the first things you hope for is that they can save you tax.  Let’s face it, no-one likes paying tax and everyone expects us accountants to be able to ‘sort it’ so that they can pay less tax.  And, whilst this is absolutely...

Christmas is a time for festive cheer, but the traditional break from work also provides an opportunity for reflection on the year passed and planning for the year to come.  As well as moving house and booking a holiday (or staycation), a lot of us will be thinking about changing...

A lot of clients would normally be asking for advice right now to make sure that they throw a great party without ending up with a tax hangover.  Everyone is having to be a little more imaginative this year, but it is important to know that, whilst the way we celebrate might have...

In Ancient Rome, there were people specially “trained” to practice a form of prophecy called haruspicy.  This involved inspecting animal innards to make predictions.  And it wasn’t just the Romans that thought this was a good idea, there are accounts of this practice continuing...

So wrote William Shakespeare over 400 years ago but this could easily have been said by HMRC in 2020. One of the most frequent question we are asked is when a tax bill needs to be paid.  It is important to get right as the fines for late payment can be eye watering. A few of the...

If you are a sole trader or a partnership, the money in your business bank account belongs to you.  Of course, you still have people that you owe money to – like HMRC and your suppliers, who will expect you to pay them first.  If you’re in a partnership, you might want to square...

One of my pet peeves is when people use the term self-employed to describe the status of people who run their own limited company.  It leads to confusion in terms of how income is taxed and, when considering eligibility for the COVID19 relief schemes, has caused lots of arguments...

When you buy assets and keep them for use in your business, you don’t necessarily get tax relief immediately.  In your accounts, these are recognised in the balance sheet as fixed assets analysed by asset type e.g. motor vehicles.  This is in contrast to when you purchase a...

PAYE tax codes are not easy to understand and yet HMRC considers it the responsibility of individual taxpayers to check that their own code is right and to inform HMRC if it is not. In our experience, it is extremely hit and miss whether taxpayers even receive a copy of their...