Accountants in Cannock who help you keep more of what you earn.
The Robin Hood Tax campaign has been gathering serious momentum over the past weeks, but what is it all about? Robin Hood was a Nottingham tyrant who stole from the rich and gave from the poor. Dependant on how you view tax on the whole, the Robin Hood Tax does the same. Perhaps more accurately titled Financial Transaction Tax, intends to put a tax of 0.05% on internal bank transactions. A stupid idea or the best way to make the banks work for you after paying to bail them out?
Weight Watchers has been told that it has a hefty amount of tax & NI to pay to HMRC after a dispute about employee status. The case originates with regional meeting leaders being self employed and the taxman taking a different view on the matter. Because of the way Weight Watchers treated them, HMRC reclassed them as employed and make a demand for tax. After a first-tier tribunal case Weight Watchers have lost £23 million pounds. If only it was the a measurement of weight. The moral of the story is this: Be careful how you treat your self employed workers because PAYE inspections cost. If you think that your business could be liable to an inspection contact us and we will give a free consultation and help you keep the tax man at bay.
[hidepost=0]HMRC have a reputation for taking longer than necessary to cough up any refunds, but why?[/hidepost] Well it turns out the 1 in 10 refunds owed to The Revenue's clients is held up in security. This means that you will have to wait even longer for your money to come back to you. The estimate we are given is about 3 to 4 weeks, however we have known them take 3 months to come through! Unfortunately it is something that we all just have to wait for.
Taken from Jumbo Joke. We've all heard that "derivatives" caused the financial system meltdown, but few understand what they are. Read this and you'll fully understand them, and the concept of "too big to fail." Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed in a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit. By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively. A young and dynamic Vice President at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets, and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral. At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DrinkBonds, AlkiBonds and PukeBonds. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses. One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He so informs Heidi. Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations, she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs. Overnight, DrinkBonds, AlkiBonds and PukeBonds drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various bond securities. They find they are now faced with not only having to write off her bad debt but also with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, and her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant, lays off 150 workers, and converts their full output to "Bud Light". Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar, no-strings-attached cash infusion from their cronies in Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Heidi's bar. So the drinkers are screwed, Heidi is screwed, her suppliers are screwed, her neighbors are screwed -- but the banks that caused the whole mess (and are now "too big to fail" are bailed out by the ever-more-screwed taxpayers. Now do you understand how it all works?
Everyone knows that HMRC have a huge amount of power over us, but do we truly have any idea how much? Because of the Taxes Managements Act 1970 HMRC have the power to access the following:
Discovery rules mean that HMRC can go back 20 years into your tax affairs and if any tax is due, charge you a minimum 30% penalty of the tax due. The purpose of ‘discovery assessments’ are to prevent a loss of tax to Her Majesty. If they suspect and can prove to an extent that something isn't quite right they can make a discovery assessment. They can be made in the following circumstances according to the guidance on HMRC’s website
- there is income or chargeable gains which ought to have been assessed, but have not been assessed, or
- an assessment (including any self assessment) is, or has become insufficient, or
- any relief that has been given is, or has become, excessive.
Following another move on to a new computerised system, PAYE tax codes are set to have a slight error in them. While the most of us assume that what HMRC tell us is probably going to be true but that isn't the case. Many reliefs and allowances that can be claimed are being put against secondary jobs or jobs you have recently finished. For instance, if I work at X Ltd earning the bulk of my income and then start at Y Ltd to earn a bit extra, there is a distinct possibility that my personal allowance has been put against Y Ltd even though I earn the most of my money from X Ltd. This means that my pay packet could be a lot less from X Ltd because Y Ltd is using up my tax free allowance. If you are unsure if your tax code is correct and want us to check it get in touch with us.