Latest blogs for Specialisms

MBO: Self-funding £1m deal allows owners to retire. We have successfully advised the business owners of an engineering firm on its £1m buy out by the existing management team. Our team were initially approached by the business owners for exit planning advice. The owners had successfully built up an engineering business over 20 years and…

BREXIT: Initially a silver lining for farmers? Since the BREXIT vote the value of Sterling has weakened, such that the average exchange rate for the Basic Payment Scheme has been set at €1 : £0.85228. For those farm enterprises electing to receive this in Sterling, this is some 16% better than last year. Given the…

Tenant Farmers: Is the rent for your land too high? Low commodity prices blighting British agriculture may offer some respite to Agricultural Holdings Act tenants. Rather than landlords pressing for higher rents there may be opportunities for tenants to seek downward rent reviews. Professional advice should be considered. For those locked into farm business tenancies,…

Lorry Driver Shortage: Will Government resolve crisis? The lack of HGV drivers has very much been the word on the street for a significant length of time and we have seen over the past few years this progress to what those who work in the industry perceive as a potential national crisis. The UK’s supply…

National Minimum Wage: Increases from 1-Oct-16. The Low Pay Commission today welcomed the Government’s acceptance of its recommendations for the rates of the minimum wage affecting workers under 25 and apprentices, to apply from 1 October 2016 – including: its first recommendation for the effective new minimum wage for 21-24 year olds, where the Government agreed…

R&D Tax Relief: Claims rose by 38% in 2014-15. The latest data from HMRC indicates that there has been an increase in both the number of companies making R&D tax relief claims and also that companies are increasing their R&D spend. The fact that there are a significant number of companies making claims for the first time…

Farmplan Cloud Offering: Keeping your data secure. Keeping your data safe and secure is essential for any business, however for many of us we also want to share our data with our consultants, accountants and within the business itself which can pose a problem with the existing systems we have in place. For Farmplan software…

IR35: Proposals for off-payroll working in the public sector. HMRC has been consulting over the summer on reform of the intermediaries legislation, commonly termed IR35. The proposal, announced in the Budget 2016, is to move the responsibility for determining the tax status of engagements in the public sector by consultants and others operating through their…

New Liquidation Tax Rules: How to ensure capital tax treatment. Most contractors will be aware that HMRC introduced a new targeted anti-avoidance rule (TAAR) wef 6-Apr-16, that will make it more difficult to obtain capital gains tax treatment when profits are withdrawn from a company by way of liquidation or dissolution. Four tests have to now be passed…

Small Buy-to-let Landlords: HMRC offers simplified tax rules. HMRC’s 12-week consultation into Making Tax Digital (MTD) published 15th August focuses on one of the measures aimed at simplifying the tax rules for unincorporated property businesses, giving landlords the choice to use the simplified cash basis, currently only available to some unincorporated traders. Landlords with annual business income below £10,000 will not be required to keep their business records digitally or provide quarterly updates to HMRC, but they will still be able to use the optional cash basis. Through using the cash basis, the move towards quarterly updates required by MTD would become more straightforward, giving landlords additional flexibility.