Latest Accounting News

To my readers, I hope this finds you well despite the atrocious winter weather we have endured and with various viruses doing the rounds which has certainly hit my office this week.

We all await with baited breath the budget in March.

I am sure many of you have read various speculation in the media, about likely changes but almost certainly there is going to be some movement on pension’s relief, particularly if you are a higher rate tax payer. If you anticipate wanting to put more monies into your pension fund then there is certainly a case if you are a higher rate tax payer to do it in the month of March whilst you still get relief at the highest rate as this certainly could be removed in the budget.

We are only a few weeks away from 5 April when the new dividend tax comes into operation for the small business/owner managed businesses who rely upon dividends to supplement their monthly salary of £670. They are going to find a new tax bill of 7% on these dividends.

If you do have surplus profits then now is the time to move them across in the form of dividends before 31 March. One word of warning, if your financial year end is 31 March you do need to ensure sufficient profits are left in the Company to pay your corporation tax bill, as otherwise that will cause other difficulties. If you need any help in this matter please do not hesitate to contact either John, Nicholas or Sebastian at this time.

The other matter which seems to find itself in the Press quite regularly now is the demise of the paper Tax Return and the introduction of the digital Tax Return kept online by HM Revenue & Customs. There has been much speculation that information will need to be filed to this digital account quarterly in the forms of accounts and information so the Revenue can assess tax earlier.

We certainly await further information on this but I do feel it is unlikely that it will affect the small businesses, howbeit the larger businesses may well have to post details of their profits quarterly to help HM Revenue & Customs collect the tax earlier!

The major issue in the accounting world as we are now in 2016 is the need to produce full statutory Financial Statements for the years ending 31 December 2015 and beyond subject to the new FRSSE standard 2015 and potentially also FRS102. For Charities they have the option whether to adopt the FRSSE 2015 SORP for Charities or adopt the FRS102 early.

We will be communicating with you on these matters as we venture into the new year.

John Caladine