Accountancy Tips For Small Businesses

As a small business owner you may decide to manage all of your financial affairs yourself, hand it all over to an accountant or do a bit of both, handling day to day tasks yourself or employing a book-keeper to help. The choice will depend on the nature of the business and, of course, your own inclination to be closely involved with the business finances. Whatever route you choose for yo… Continue Reading

Working From Home? How To Reduce The Company Tax Burden

Increasingly many people are running their own small businesses from home but this results in increased household expenses for heating, electricity, phone bills etc.; expenses that would not be incurred by those who go to an external workplace. But when working from home there are opportunities to reduce the tax burden of the company or self-employed individual by considering… Continue Reading

Budget Report 20 March 2014

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Are You Operating Your PAYE System Correctly?

One of the aspects of running a business that is likely to come under investigation by the tax authorities is the PAYE system and how it is being operated. HMRC investigators can request access to all of your PAYE and salary records, if necessary,  in order to check that the amount recorded in the accounts as salaries matches the actual amounts paid out as salaries and recorded on pays… Continue Reading

How To Select the Right Accountant

Whether you have an established business, have just started a business or are still at the planning stage, the choice of accountant is an important decision. For a new company, busy with all the excitement of getting up and running, selecting an accountant may not seem to be a top priority but bringing an accountant on board early can help with setting up a Limited Company and structu… Continue Reading

Tax solutions for US citizens in the UK

We at Tuchbands have just been through this year’s IRS return filings for our US citizen clients. We work closely with a specialist firm of US accountants based in UK to ensure that our clients receive a seamless service for filing both a UK and US tax returns. One feature of the US tax filing is the set of forms known as FBARS which stands for Foreign Bbank and Financial Accounts R… Continue Reading

How to get money out of a Limited Company

Since 5 April 2013 the additional rate of income tax payable on income over £150,000 is reduced from 50% to 45%. Many earners in this tax bracket receive their income as dividends.  A 40% tax payer pays an effective rate of tax on the net dividend of 25% Because of the 5% reduction mentioned above a 45% taxpayer (receiving gross income above £150,000) pays a rate of tax reduced from 36.1… Continue Reading

Why Your Company Needs a Good Business Plan

Some recent surveys have indicated that there is a correlation for small businesses between having a business plan and the profits they make. This suggests that any SME without a business plan could be losing out on potential profits. That may seem quite a surprising assessment but significantly more companies with a business plan made a profit than those companies that did not ha… Continue Reading

Employing Family Members

There is a band of earnings which are subject to ‘nil rate National Insurance contributions’ – this apparent contradiction in terms means that no contributions are payable, by employee or employer, but the employee’s contribution record is still franked for pension and Social Security benefit purposes. For 2013/14, the ‘nil rate band’ runs from the ‘Lower Earnings Limit’ of £1… Continue Reading

Cash Accounting Schemes for Small Business

There have been substantial last-minute amendments to the cash accounting scheme for small businesses, originally announced in last year’s Budget. The scheme will give qualifying businesses the option of calculating their taxable profits as cash received less payments made in the year, so ignoring creditors, debtors, changes in stock levels, etc. It takes effect for 2013/1… Continue Reading