Latest blogs for Specialisms

Requests for Payment If you supply goods, the taxpoint for accounting for VAT on these sales is the sooner of: The raising of a tax invoice, or Receipt of payment. To delay this taxpoint, it will usually, therefore, be beneficial, prior to dispatching goods, to raise a “Request for Payment”,  “Application” or “Proforma Invoice” instead…

New Charity Commission Guidance: Charities, trading subsidiaries and gift aid. The Charity Commission has withdrawn guidance from its website in connection with Gift Aid beyond distributable profits from charity trading arms to the parent charity. Some charities own subsidiary trading companies through which they carry out trading activities for a profit. The subsidiary may donate…

Proposals to Reduce the CIS Tax Compliance Burden on Construction Sector. The Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) has published its response to HMRC’s proposals to introduce mandatory online CIS filing for contractors, amend the gross payment status turnover and compliance tests and improve the sub-contractor verification process. It welcomes the proposals aimed at reducing the…

New Charities SORP Published The new Charities SORP was published today and will apply to the accounts of charities for financial years commencing on or after 1 January 2015. There are two versions, one based on Financial Reporting Standard FRS 102 (new UK GAAP which replaces all earlier financial reporting standards) and a second for…

Employer or Self-Employed? – that is the question As an employer, legislation makes it your responsibility to correctly determine the employment status of your workers – that is, whether they’re employed by you or self-employed. This depends on the terms and conditions of your working relationship with each worker. It’s important to get your workers’…

Schemes now appearing in Construction Sector to Circumvent HMRC’s new Disguised Employment Anti-Avoidance Rules. The Government’s new rules to tackle the false self-employment of construction workers and agency ‘temps’ entered into force on 6 April 2014, but were swiftly followed by headlines such as ‘New model tries to duck false self-employment rules’ in the recruitment…

Dividend Cap on CIC’s. Community Interest Companies (CIC’s) are a relatively new type of company designed for enterprises with social purpose that want to use their profits and assets for public good. There are now over 8,000 CIC’s on the public register at Companies House. However, CIC’s are subject to an asset lock to ensure…

Academies – 2013 Audit Outcomes There were 2,248 sets of audited accounts submitted to the EFA for the year ended 31st August 2013. Of these 25 (1.1%) had a qualified audit opinion and 73 (3.2%) had a qualified regularity opinion. Of the 25 qualified audit opinions, 21 of these resulted from failure to disclose trustee’s…

Academies:  2013 Audit Outcomes. There were 2,248 sets of audited accounts submitted to the EFA for the year ended 31st August 2013. Of these 25 (1.1%) had a qualified audit opinion and 73 (3.2%) had a qualified regularity opinion. Of the 25 qualified audit opinions, 21 of these resulted from failure to disclose trustees’ salaries.…

Are You Considering Reshoring? There are early signs of a growing trend of manufacturing businesses taking a critical look at their production processes. Parts of their production that had previously been outsourced abroad, particularly to perceived low cost suppliers in the east, are now being brought back to the UK. This is being labelled as…