When you are selling your home, you are likely to be selling a range of fixtures and fittings. For example: • White goods, washing machines, fridges, cookers etc, • Furniture, • Carpets, • Curtains, • Garden equipment, • Leisure or fitness equipment, jacuzzi etc, • And the garden shed. If identified in the sale contract, any value attributed to these personal assets, or chattels, will not attract a...
Evidence or assertion?
In a recent tax case, three taxpayers asserted that cleaning costs of work clothes amounted to £2,200 a year and HMRC disagreed. The facts were compelling. Each of the appellants worked in the drainage or sewage industry and to maintain personal hygiene they washed work clothing on a daily basis. Why shouldn’t they claim for the costs of keeping their work...
Self employed liability
If you are a sole trader, or in a basic partnership, and if your business gets into financial difficulties, any liabilities that cannot be covered by the disposal of business assets may have to settled out of personal assets. In accountancy speak, you have unlimited liability; there is no protection for your personal assets. You have options. The Office for Tax Simplification has...
Planning or regretting?
As we have outlined in recent posts, change is upon us and come the end of March next year, the combination of Brexit and the advent of Making Tax Digital (MTD) will change much that we have taken for granted. Apart from the cross-border considerations (import VAT, customs duties and the like) MTD will require all affected businesses to link with...
Grants available for food producers and suppliers
Up to £20 million is being made available to increase productivity and sustainability in crop and ruminant agriculture systems through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. Innovate UK are looking for projects that improve productivity and sustainability in crop and ruminant agriculture. There is £20 million to be shared across 2 types of project: productivity solutions, which develop a single intervention within a supply...
Buy-to-let mortgages
The gradual restriction of tax relief for buy-to-let mortgage interest has received much publicity since the process commenced 5 April 2017. From that date, tax relief is converted from a straight forward deduction against business profits into a basic rate tax deduction. If you continue to be a basic rate taxpayer as these changes roll-out, you will see no increase in...
What is side-ways loss relief?
If a business owner makes a loss as a self-employed person, they can set off the losses against any other earnings of the same year. In effect, the business losses are moved side-ways against other earnings. However, in order for loss relief to be allowed, the loss making business must be able to demonstrate that it was managed on a commercial...
Protect your home
A government think-tank, the Office for Tax Simplification (OTS), was briefed to consider a non-tax issue, a restricted form of limited liability for sole traders. At present, a sole trader’s personal assets (including their home) are vulnerable to a claim by business creditors if the sole trader business becomes insolvent. The principle behind this Sole Enterprise with Protected Assets (SEPA) scheme is...
Customs procedures with a no deal Brexit
Last week we posted an article advising businesses that trade with the EU of guidance that HMRC have issued in the event that we do not reach an accommodation with the EU when we leave March 2019. This week we are paraphrasing, from HMRC’s guidance announcements, the likely changes to customs procedures if the so-called “no deal” scenario becomes a reality....
Spreadsheets and VAT from April 2019
Making Tax Digital (MTD) is HMRC’s long running intention to make an electronic link with the accounting data of UK businesses. The idea is to draw in the data they need directly from your computers using links provided by your software developers for this purpose. Which is fine if you are using accounts software that will accommodate these changes. The first implementation...