Thursday April 5, 2012 at 10:58am
The Budget brought excellent news for businesses involved in product innovation: an improved tax credit system will be applied to research and development. For many companies, growth in years ahead is dependent on research and development now. Tomorrow’s cutting edge products have to be devised today, but in the current economic climate investing the considerable sums of money needed for R&D is a hard and even risky decision. It can be many years before a return is made on such investm....
Friday February 10, 2012 at 9:00am
Investors and start-ups take note. From 6 April 2012, the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) offers tax breaks to individuals investing in small companies. In 2012/13, these tax breaks could be worth 78% of the investment.
SEIS conditions
SEIS builds on the success of the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS). The government's idea is to help riskier start-up companies raise the finance they need.
In order to qualify:
Companies must have 25 employees or fewer
Their assets must ....
Thursday September 8, 2011 at 6:46pm
It is always frustrating when a client tells me of a financial transaction they have just completed without thinking to consider the tax implications first. In many ways it is not unreasonable for clients to assume that the transaction they are undertaking is straightforward and nothing can be done to improve it. However, there are a surprising number of ways to reduce tax that most people would know nothing about. Here are some examples:
Mitigate stamp duty on property purchases It is lega....
Thursday July 21, 2011 at 9:00am
You may have read about the tax planning carried out by UK PLCs to reduce their corporation tax bill and thought 'Why can't we do that?'
Well, maybe you can. You may not be able (or want) to commit to some of the cross border tax planning strategies that a much bigger, global business can. But there are simple tax planning strategies available to pretty much any business.
Firstly check whether you are making the most of your legitimate corporate tax reducing opportunities and, at the same ti....
Thursday March 3, 2011 at 10:00am
As the tax year end approaches now is an ideal time to review your tax and financial planning requirements. High earners in particular could save a considerable amount of money by implementing some tax planning ideas before 5th April this year.
With the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) carrying out a review into all tax reliefs, allowances and exemptions, and identifying reliefs, you may want to consider making sure any tax planning is executed before the 23rd March 2011 Budget, which will t....
Monday February 7, 2011 at 10:00am
With the financial year end only a few months away now is the time to start taking last minute action to try and reduce your 2010/11 tax liability and save on tax.
Business owners action plan
1. Bring forward capital expenditure. If you are considering significant capital or revenue expenditure this year you may want to see if you can bring the payments forward and claim tax relief in the accounts to March 2011.
There are still generous capital allowances for purchases of equipment th....
Thursday January 20, 2011 at 10:50am
Interesting to read Fidelity International last week suggesting that high earners could be facing tax bills amounting to 68% of their earnings. Whether you agree with their figure, apparently calculated by taking into account tax and national insurance rate changes as well as the recent hike in VAT, there’s no doubt that under the new tax regime many high earners will face significant increases in their tax liability unless they take specialist advice and take advantage of every tax mitiga....
Monday December 6, 2010 at 9:47am
One of the changes announced in the June budget seems not to have crossed many business owners’ radar and yet I think it potentially has a substantial impact on how they might be able to reduce tax costs now and in the future.
You may have spotted the change to the tax relief on contributions into pensions being reduced from £255,000 to £50,000 per annum for pensions with a pension input period ending after 5th April 2011. You might have been excused for thinking that it&rsqu....
Thursday December 2, 2010 at 6:02pm
The corporation tax road map revealed by George Osborne on 30th November 2010 reveals government plans to reform corporation tax over the next 5 years. Plans include lowering the corporation tax from 28% current to 24% by 2014 and changes to the controlled foreign company tax regime, as well as a drop in the corporate tax rate for patents in a bid to encourage companies into the UK.
The principles of the reform proposed reform of corporation tax seem sound, but how will it all play out in prac....
Thursday September 30, 2010 at 7:05pm
At the Liberal party conference Nick Clegg was the latest Government spokesman to talk about clamping down on tax avoidance. He even went on to talk about avoiding tax as being an ethical question. I’d say a bigger ethical question is how our taxes are spent by government. Indeed if people felt their taxes were being spent wisely and fairly they may have more time for the ethics of high taxation. What’s all the fuss about? It is probably worth looking at the distinction between evasi....