Autumn Statement 2014 Review

So you would all have seen some sort of media coverage of the Chancellors Autumn Statement but most of what is in the press is just the headline grabbing key items.  In fact as usual there was a vast array of tax areas covered.  A lot, in fact most, of the changes do not affect the majority of people hence you won’t have seen them mentioned in the press.

Here’s my review of the main topics that will cover most of you and the topics that will cover at least one of my clients but there was much more.

If there are any areas that anyone wants me to elaborate on please email me directly.

Income Tax        

The Personal Allowance for 2015/16 will increase to £10,600.

As this exceeds the age allowance this will apply to everyone born after 6 April 1938.

The Personal Allowance for those born before 6 April 1938 will be £10,660.  As this is only £60 more than the standard personal allowance, those whose income exceeds £27,700 will only lose £60 from the age allowance write down.

20% rate band increases to £31,785 meaning the 40% rate band starts at earnings from £42,385, a much needed increase.  Threshold for the 45% rate band remains at £150,000.

National Insurance

No rate changes for Class 1 & Class 4 but the upper earnings limit has been bought into line with the 40% income tax threshold of £42,385.

The rates for Class 2 & Class 3 will be increased.

Class 2 will be bought into the self assessment tax system and be paid with your tax bill from 2015/16 so no more monthly or quarterly direct debits for the self employed.

Employers will not have to pay secondary Class 1 NIC on the pay of employees under the age of 21 years unless they earn over £815 per week.  This is extended to apprentices under 25 years old.

Extension to the £2000 employment allowance which reduces employers secondary Class 1 contributions.  This will now also include domestic care and support workers.

Pensions

Abolition of the 55% charge on death.

• When an individual dies before age 75, the pension fund may pass tax free to the nominated beneficiary.
• When an individual dies over the age of 75, the pension fund, when withdrawn, will be taxed at the beneficiary’s marginal rate of income tax or 45% if taken as a lump sum.

This is extended to Annuities as well.

Overseas Matters

The proposal to restrict the personal allowance to non residents has been delayed until at least 2017.

Non-domiciliary  Remittance Basis Charge (RBC)

Resident in the UK but not domiciled here for:

•    7 out of last 9 years – charge £30,000 per yr unchanged
•  12 out of last 14 years –charge now £60,000 per yr
•  17 out of last 20 years – charge now £90,000 per yr

Property Owners

Stamp Duty Land Tax on residential property has been reformed.  Before if you were buying a property which falls into the 3% bracket you would have to pay 3% on the whole value, now you just pay the appropriate % on the value over each threshold.  Rates as follows:

• Upto £125,000                                 0%
• £125,001 to £250,000                      2%
• £250,001 to £925,000                      5%
• £925,001 to £1.5m                         10%
• £1.5m +                                          12%

Annual tax on enveloped dwellings (ATED)

Came into effect in 2013 and has raised 5 times more revenue than the government expected.

Applies to properties owned by ‘non-natural persons’ ie companies.  These businesses are structured in a way to avoid paying Stamp Duty on purchased and/or Capital Gains Tax on sale.  The ATED charge fills this gap.  Rates as follows:

• Properties worth £2m to £5m       – charge £23,350
• Properties worth £5m to £10m     – charge £54,450
• Properties worth £10m to £20m   – charge £109,050
• Properties worth £20m+                – charge £218,200

Business Owners

Intangible assets transferred on incorporation.  2 measures bought in to reduce the amount of tax relief available on incorporation of a business.

• Entrepreneur’s relief will not be available on the disposal of goodwill where an individual or partnership incorporates their trade.
• Corporation Tax relief is restricted on internally generated goodwill and customer-related intangible assets acquired from a related party on incorporation.

Employees

Simplification of expenses and benefits system.

Business Rates

The current doubling of Small Business Rate Relief will continue as will the 2% cap on the multiplier.

Shops, pubs, cafes & restaurants with a rateable value of less than £50,000 will see their current £1000 discount rise to £1500 pa.

Corporation Tax

The main rate will be bought into line with the small profits rate – both will be 20% from 2015/16.

Capital Gains Tax

Threshold increases to £11,100 for 2015/16

Inheritance Tax

No changes, it’s expected the current nil rate band will stay frozen until at least 2018/19.

ISAs

The annual savings allowance will increase to £15,240, currently £15,000.

ISAs are currently exempt from inheritance tax if passing to a surviving spouse but are taxable in the hands of the spouse.  Now the spouse will receive a tax free allowance to cover the ISA amount so no income or capital gains tax will be payable.

Travel Expenses for Local Authority Councillors

Mileage allowance will now be capped at the Approved Mileage Allowance Payment rates.

Peer to Peer Lending

Growing in popularity due to various new websites

New relief to offset losses from bad debts against other P2P profits.

Other

Numerous other areas which have had some reform, if you want to know more please contact me.

• Non tax-advantaged share schemes
• Anti-Avoidance, Fee income on fund managers
• Special Purpose Share Schemes
• Miscellaneous Loss Relief
• General anti-abuse rule (GAAR)
• Serial tax avoiders
• Offshore tax penalties – now 200%
• Disclosure of tax avoidance schemes (DOTAS)
• Venture Capital schemes
• High risk promoters
• HMRC direct recovery of debts and the power to close aspects of an enquiry.
• Research and Development relief schemes

VAT

VAT on Prompt Payment Discounts – you normally calculate vat assuming customer will take the prompt payment discount.  Now you will have to account for vat on the amount actually paid so will have to re-invoice for the extra vat if discount wasn’t taken.

VAT refunds for search & rescue and air ambulance charities, hospices, various government departments and the Highways Agency which will shortly be replaced by a government owned company.

Air Passenger Duty exemption for under 12 year olds, extending to 16 year olds in 2016.

Fuel duty of 7.9p per litre put on Aqua Methanol.

 

Data from Tolley via Association of Accounting Technicians

Picture courtesy of Unsplash

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A Bit On The Side

A Bit on the Side

No, not what you’re thinking, I’m talking about the Side Gig, Side Hustle, Moonlighting, Homers, whatever you want to call it, it can be a very good idea.

Initially I built up my accounts practice on the side of my day job before leaving that job to grow my business full time.

More and more people are moonlighting on the side of their day job – so why is this such a good idea?

Test the waters

If you eventually want your side job to become your full time job, growing it on the side gives you time to test the waters, experiment and learn.  It lets you try out different strategies to see what works and allows you to fail, all whilst keeping the financial security of your day job.

Not having to rely on your side gig for income allows you to focus on the long term success rather than short term income.

Extra Income

You’ll no doubt make some money from your side gig to compliment your full time income.  Whether you use this extra income to grow the business, save or dig yourself out of debt is up to you but the extra cash will always be nice.

Cash lets you fund your own start up or take a pay cut when you eventually want/need to ditch the full time job and make your side job the full timer.

Money can make you feel that you have options, that you have some backup, that you can afford to fail.  In other words it makes you feel safe, and if you feel safe you are more likely to take the small risks necessary to start up.

What to do

You need to establish what your side gig is going to be – what are you good at, what do you know how to do, what would you like to do, what would others pay you to do.

Getting started

Once you’ve decided what you are going to do you need to work out how you are going to get clients/customers.  How are you going to get the word out about what you are doing and what platforms are you going to use to do this.

Keeping it going

Office management – even if your side job is something low tech such as dog walking, don’t think you don’t need to get involved in office management.

A side gig doesn’t have to be about money.  It can be for fun, to gain experience or self education.   However, if money is the main objective you need to take it seriously.  Dealing with administrative tasks, paperwork, income, expenses, taxes and marketing all need to be done.  If you are making money you have a legal obligation to declare this for tax which requires some record keeping.

Stay Organised

If you’re working 9–5 and then moonlighting on the side, you are going to be busy.  You must stay on top of the admin and if you are making money you need to stay on top of the finances.  Keep track of all income, expenses, bank and paypal accounts.  You may need to develop systems for tracking this, customer/client relationship management and other items relevant to your line of work.  These systems can be anything from notebook scribbles or spreadsheets to specialised software.  The more you have going on, the more you need to attend to these back office tasks.

Word of warning

If your side gig is something that could tread on the toes of your full time employers business, you should get their permission first as there may be clauses in your employment contract to stop employees setting up in competition against them or stealing their clients.

Photo Credit: Splitshire.com

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Passwords

As more and more aspects of our lives are going online our internet security is becoming increasingly important. It’s no longer ok to have the word ‘Password’ for a password or to have the same password for everything, so what are we to do?

Firstly, what not to do

We post so much personal information online via Social Media or have information about ourselves held by others, some publicly available on mediums such as the electoral role that using any word or name that is related to you such as your son, daughter or even pets names are easy pickings for hackers, even if you add a number to the end.

Never use the word ‘Password’ or simple combinations like ‘qwerty123’ or ‘abcd123’. The shorter the password, the easier it is to crack. The average home PC is capable of being programmed to crack a 6 character password in a under an hour, 8 characters would take 24 hours, 10 is apparently about a month.

You need to come up with strong passwords

What is a Strong Password – A strong password contains at least 8 characters and should contain both UPPER and lower case letters and numbers.

A Superstrong Password is as above but with at least 10 characters and could also include special characters such as ‘!*&{@’ but not all systems allow these.

Here are some tips for coming up with a secure password which is still memorable.

Think of 2 or more words, convert the first word to all lower case and the second to Uppercase or vice versa. Then convert certain letters to numbers for example:

• I or i becomes 1
• E becomes 3
• g becomes 9
• o or O becomes 0
• B becomes 8
• S becomes 5
• and becomes &
• at or a becomes @

Examples in use:

• Happy Chappie    –           h@ppyCH@PP13
• Foolish Password –          f001!5Hp@55WORD
• Off Down The Pub –        0ffD0wnTH3pu8
• Strong and Secure –        5tr0n9&53CUR3

This works best if you choose words that have meaning to you.

Try not to re-use passwords – its ok to do this on unimportant sites such as forums but not for online shopping or banking.

Final Point

It is vitally important that you NEVER EVER use your email account password anywhere other than on your email account. Alot of sites automatically use your email address as your username. If you then use the same password as you do for your email and that site is hacked, the first thing a hacker will do is hack into your email account and then try all the other sites you use with that email address and the first site they will try is your Paypal and other bank accounts where they can get something out of you.

Stay safe.

Acknowledgements and credit for content to S Watts of Siwis Ltd

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New Annual Tax Statements

So October is just a handful of days away, and this October not only allows us to throw our car tax discs away but for some of you lucky folk October also brings you the New Annual Tax Statement.

One of the Coalitions promises back in 2010 was that every tax payer would be sent a statement of their tax position, including National Insurance and where the money is spent. Four years on and they are nearly here – but not for everyone.

Initially the statements will only cover your tax position for 2012/13 and will only go out to those paying tax under self assessment and are registered for HMRCs online services; or if you pay PAYE and receive a P2 Notice of Coding or a P800 tax calculation.

If you do receive one of these you don’t need to do anything with it, as it’s just for information purposes but it would be good to check through it.

One very handy use for this statement will be to check your NI contributions. There are new State Pension rules coming into effect in April 2016 and to receive the full State Pension you need to have paid the correct amount of NI contributions for 35 years. You will be able to check that you have paid enough with these statements.

We await their arrival!!

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Funny Tax Laws from around the world

A collection of amusing tax laws, past and present.

Peter the Great introduced a beard tax. Any Russian wanting to remain beardy had to pay an annual amount and was issued with a beard token which he had to carry with him in public to prove he had paid.

Roman Emperor Nero introduced a tax on the collection of urine. Back then it was used to prepare animal skins – and you thought today’s taxman was taking the piss!

In Canada children’s breakfast cereal is tax exempt if it includes a free toy. The free toy must not be beer, liquor or wine – yes, they actually thought they needed to clarify that, imagine Coco Pops with a free beer toy!!

In Sweden there is a tax for naming your baby something that is not already in use. It is also applied to the misspelling of names and names like ‘Apple’ regardless of income, status and tax bracket.

Scaredy-cat tax was introduced by Henry I for English knights that didn’t want to go to war. It was originally very low and meant as a deterrent but King John later raised it by 300% and even collected it when not at war. This led to the formation of the Magna Carter.

In 1988 a stripper in the US called ‘Chesty Love’ successfully claimed her boob job as a business expense. This paved the way for anyone in the adult entertainment industry to claim cosmetic surgery expenses if it would lead to more work.

In UK tax law biscuits and cakes are deemed necessities and are exempt VAT but cover biscuits in chocolate and they are luxuries that have 20% vat added to them. So Jaffa Cakes – are they biscuits or cakes? McVities invented them and they make biscuits so they were forced to go a tribunal and prove they are cakes – they won so they are non vatable chocolate covered cakes.

In the Netherlands tax deductions are allowed on training in magic and witchcraft after an actress claimed £1500 tax relief for a year long course in potion making, spell casting & crystal ball reading.

Cow Flatulence Tax – This is a new tax being introduced in EU countries. Cow farts cause 18% of global warming. Large clouds of methane hang in the air over slaughter houses where they store thousands of cows causing negative effects on air quality. Ireland tax $18 per cow while Denmark charges $110.

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HMRCs Home Office Policies

How much can you claim, for using a room in your home for business purposes?

HMRCs guidance uses typically vague words such as ‘fair & reasonable’ and ‘modest or excessive’. The trouble is someone earning mega money will think one figure is fair and reasonable but to most of us the same figure would seem excessive.

HMRC believes just £4 per week is all that should be claimed for the use of a home office. This measly amount is deemed as a ‘significant’ expenses and any claim over this amount must be justified by providing records or demonstrating your calculations.

How to can claim over the £4 per week

One way to prove your claim is reasonable is to calculate your monthly outgoings for gas, electric, rent, water etc then divide this by the number of rooms in the property (excluding kitchens & bathrooms).  For example if you have 5 rooms (Lounge, Dining Room, 3 Bedrooms) and one is used as an office take 1/5^th of these bills.

If this amount seems too substantial for your business use you could divide it down further by the number of hours you spend in it working each day eg, 8/24 hrs or by the number of days per week that you work or by square meterage if known.

Beware

Be careful if claiming for more than one room as you will need more justification but it is possible ie a photographer could have an office and a darkroom (days before digital).

You should never claim the room is ‘solely’ for business purposes as this could lead to a business rates claim by the local council for part of your home or even Capital Gains Tax when you sell your property. Most people’s home office also doubles as a spare bedroom or is home to the unused exercise bike or the kids use it for doing their homework.

If you run your business through a Limited Company you can draw up a lease agreement so your company is reimbursing you for the costs of the room thus reducing your Corporation Tax but again, to be exempt from Capital Gains Tax when you sell the property make sure the agreement doesn’t state that it is solely and exclusively for business purposes.

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Tax Payments on Account

So 31^st January has long passed which means most of you Self Employed have paid your tax bill. This is never going to be good but when Payments on Account kick in, it’s doubly rubbish and you’ll be currently saving to pay the 31^st July bill. So why do some just pay in January and some have to pay in January and July? It is simple but always seems quite complicated when you start to explain how this works but here goes.

Firstly payments on account kick in when your tax due for the year is in excess of £1000. Each payment on account is for half your previous tax bill and the payments are due on 31^st January and 31^st July.

So for example, if your tax is £999 for the year ending 5^th April 2014 that is how much you need to pay by 31^st January 2015. No payments on account needed, simple.

However, if for the first time your tax bill for the year ending 5^th April 2014 comes to £1000, you will not only have to pay the £1000 by 31^st January 2015 but you will also have to pay £500 on account of the next tax year, so £1500 by 31^st January 2015 then another £500 by 31^st July 2015.

Then once your tax bill for the following tax year ending 5^th April 2015 is calculated, and for example, it comes to £1200 due 31^st January 2016, you have already paid £500 twice on account of this so only the balance of £200 is due but you also have to pay half of the £1200 on account of the following year so your payment for 31^st January 2016 would be £200 + £600 with another £600 due by 31^st July 2016.

Clear as mud!!!

Any tax overpaid in advance will be refunded with interest and if you know in advance that your next year’s tax bill will be lower, the payments on account can be reduced.

It’s always best to get your tax bill calculated as early as possible so if you do have a nasty bill, you have longer to save for it or if you have overpaid, you get your money back earlier.

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My Office

Following on from my previous blogs ‘Working from home’ and ‘What your desk says about you’, it occurred to me that none of my 170 clients have ever seen my office so here is a guided tour.

Firstly my office takes over 2 rooms; one has filing cabinets and storage of work to be done and work to be collected.

The other is where the many, many hours of work are done.

There are 2 workstations, 2 laptops, a Mac, 2 printers, shelving, stationery cupboard, filing trays, white board, pin board, Bose speaker doc, telephone, shredder, binder and all the necessary stationery. All very usual and boring.

However, I have some more interesting objects in the office to make it more personal to me.

A canvas of Moto GP Champion Jorge Lorenzo – I’m a big fan.

On the shelf you may have spotted there is an Ice Hockey goalie mask – a present from my husband. This one is from NHL team Florida Panthers (not my team but they are hard to come by) and it actually has blood inside it. I also have 2 ice hockey pucks – they make great paper weights.

Look see I really am qualified and licenced to practice!

My stapler is the best stapler ever, I had it for years at my last place of work and loved it so much that they let me keep it when I left 6 years ago and it’s still going strong. I don’t know what I’d do if it broke.

My paperclips are held in a little cake box from The Bulldog – one of those ‘special’ cafes in Amsterdam and yes the cake was ‘special’ too. My husband and I thought we would be brave and try one. So sitting on the edge of a canal in the red light district, whilst watching the numerous stag parties go by, we split the tiny cake in half and ate half each, then waited ….. and waited ……and, nothing!! It was probably just an overpriced sponge cake.

My husband and son stick stickers on everything – I hate stickers, the side of my printer is the only place I allow them on my stuff and they have to meet the criteria of being pretty/cute/girly bike related stickers.

Finally, my all important calculator. I’ve had it from when I was studying accountancy so I estimate it to be at least 15 years old. Pretty much all of the numbers have disappeared from the keys and I never even realised until my son tried to use it to do his maths homework and he would ask “Where’s the 3”, “where’s the plus”, and I would tell him “where they’ve always been” – no wonder he done so badly in maths.

 

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Where Exactly Does Your Tax Money Go

 

So I guess I should be doing a blog about the budget but there really wasn’t much in it that you wouldn’t already know about, so I thought I’d share something I saw in an accounting magazine the other day which I thought was interesting.

You can check this out yourself at http://wheredoesmymoneygo.org/ click on The Daily Bread then move the slider to how much you earn and it tells you where every penny of tax you pay gets spent.

Apparently the average full time UK worker pays £11,019 of tax per year or £30.18 a day.

Of that £30.18 the NHS receives the biggest portion at £7.36, that’s a lot more than the premiums for a private scheme would cost the average person.

Pensioners get £5.12 of the average tax payer’s daily wages which represents by far the biggest cost in the Social Security budget.  By comparison the sick & disabled get £2.10, families & children get £1.31 and unemployed people get 53p.

£2.56 goes on paying interest on the UK’s spiralling debt.

£1.93 goes on education.

 

Average Joe then pays £1.03 to top level government which is more than goes to front line services that only get 72p for transport, 27p for police and a meager 2p for fire services.

Other interesting beneficiaries are:

• Defence £2.06
• Overseas Aid 38p
• Environment 29p
• Sports & recreation 9p
• Prisons 28p
• Courts 40p
• Media 23p !?!? – and the fire service only get 2p

Which still leaves £3.50 that goes to a multitude of other places such as Health & Safety, Research, Community Admin and the EU.

Interesting.

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Let’s talk about Chris Moyles

Now first off I was never a huge fan of this guys radio show and I hope his smug grin has been erased for a while and quite frankly I am amazed that he had earned enough money to try and avoid paying £1 million tax.

What cases like this have done is blur the line between tax avoidance and tax evasion and got the public, through the media, thinking that all tax avoidance is wrong.  Let’s distinguish:-

Tax Avoidance – This is just good tax planning, we all want to pay as little tax as we have to so we claim all the proper expenses etc., to get our tax as low as possible.  It’s what you pay people like me for and is completely legal.

Tax Evasion – This is illegally reducing the amount of tax you pay or deliberately not paying what you owe.

So back to Chris Moyles, the scheme he was involved in was called ‘Working Wheels’ and was described on HMRCs own website as ‘Abusive Avoidance’.  Its members claimed to be self employed used car traders.   Yes the Radio 1 DJ claimed on his tax return that he was a second hand car dealer!  They would declare large tax deductions for vast finance fees (£1m fees)incurred to borrow small amounts of money (£5,000) to invest in their so called ‘trade’ that they were not actually pursuing.  In fact the only fees they had to pay were to the scheme promoter.

Although the scheme was a legal tax avoidance scheme the Appeals Tribunal has dismissed it after the Judge said it was impossible to reach a conclusion that this was a trade seriously pursued with a view to profit, i.e., Chris Moyles wasn’t actually trading as a used car dealer – quelle surprise!!

So despite this being a ‘legal’ tax avoidance scheme it has been decided that Mr Moyles and the other 450 members of the scheme must now pay the tax they owe.  Surely this then makes the scheme illegal tax evasion but they have not been issued with any punishments, only to pay what they should have paid in the first place plus some interest and penalties.  The scheme provider can go on to sell their doggy avoidance schemes to others.

Hopefully HMRC will one day seriously clamp down on these schemes so they don’t exist in the first place then they won’t have to spend millions of honest tax payers money to get the dishonest tax payers money they are owed.

 

Credit for some of the content and inspiration to AccountingWeb.