VAT Flat Rate Scheme for your Small Business!

Should I Use The VAT Flat Rate Scheme For My Small Business?

The VAT Flat Rate Scheme is intended to simplify VAT accounting and reporting for small businesses, and some may even find that they pay less VAT than using normal VAT accounting.

To join the scheme your VAT turnover must be £150,000 or less (excluding VAT), and you must apply to HMRC to use the scheme. You can remain in the scheme until your turnover including VAT exceeds £230,000. 

With the Flat Rate Scheme you pay a fixed rate of VAT to HMRC depending on your business category and you keep the difference between what you charge your customers and pay to HMRC. However, you can’t reclaim the VAT on your purchases, except for certain capital assets over £2,000.

HMRC have recently revised their guidance on different business categories. 

For example not all consultants should use the 14% flat rate applicable to management consultants and should instead use the 12% rate for ‘business services not listed elsewhere’. That would result in them paying over 2% less of their takings to HMRC. On £150,000 a year that would be a £3,000 VAT saving. There is a further 1% reduction in the first year that the business is VAT registered.

To sum it up, with the Flat Rate Scheme:

• you pay a fixed rate of VAT to HMRC
• you keep the difference between what you charge your customers and pay to HMRC
• you can’t reclaim the VAT on your purchases - except for certain capital assets over £2,000
• To join the scheme your VAT turnover must be £150,000 or less (excluding VAT), and you must apply to HMRC.

If you want to know more or advice on whether the Flat Rate Scheme is right for you, contact us.

PJ - APJ Accountancy

☎ 020 89310165

☏ 07900537459

✉ info@apjaccountancy.com

5 tips to build an effective talent management strategy!

A good talent management strategy is all about acquiring, hiring and retaining talented employees. It involves linking various components of the business together to develop those people likely to drive future business growth.

The responsibilities should be spread throughout human resources, training, and selected management sponsors. Talent Management requires a mindset that goes beyond just talk, and moves the focus towards a holistic and integrated approach to leveraging the greatest competitive advantage from your firm’s people. It is about those thoughts and actions that, consistently, over time, become part of your firm’s organisational culture.

Managers should drive talent management

The cultural fit between an employee and manager is critical to the employee's job satisfaction. In a world where up-and-coming generations consider three years with a company a serious commitment, line managers, supported by the expertise of HR professionals, can enhance employee retention by ensuring cultural matches at both firm-wide and workgroup levels.

The best and brightest talent have technical competence, marketing savvy, passion, energy and drive. They also have the "soft" people skills that help motivate others and ensure effective execution of their roles. Line managers understand the particular skills and competencies they need to accomplish their business goals. They should drive the firm’s talent practices, working closely with HR, to recruit talented people, manage performance, provide career guidance and serve as role models. Line managers are also ideally positioned to identify and develop current employees with leadership potential.

Life long learning should become a cultural norm and expectation

When you think about the pace of change around businesses today, many traditional talent management processes are less relevant than they used to be. Some areas of expertise are changing every year, leaving many skilled employees struggling to stay relevant. And while competency management systems, career path planning, and multi-year development cycles made sense in yesterday's work environment, they are no longer enough. Employee development begins with an effective onboarding program. Competent, competitive firms take time to educate every employee about their products, customers, industry, market and competition. Annual talent reviews should be a core business process, as important as annual strategic business and operational reviews. Accelerated leadership development is now a business imperative and the role of succession planning is essential in ensuring a sustainable, competitive business.

Agile talent management strategy

It used to be that entrepreneurial businesses had to be nimble, and they often lost that agility as they grew into larger firms full of processes and bureaucracy. These days, competitive firms of every size need strategic flexibility to react rapidly to change. That means creating an agile talent management strategy that makes a multitude of solutions available in short timeframes.

How to Deliver an Interesting and Engaging Presentation?

The problem with an uninteresting presentation generally isn’t the content - it is the delivery. Any content can be made to be exciting, dynamic, and memorable. Rather than presenting facts and figures in a standard presentation format, think about how you turn your subject matter into an experience that relates to the audience.

Tell a story

Storytelling has the potential to help make a presentation come alive and therefore more memorable. Rather than PowerPoint slides, write out your presentation in essay format, then use just a few slides to emphasise key points. Become the narrator and take your audience on a journey with you.

A picture paints a thousand words

Sometimes a slide containing nothing more than a picture is all you need to convey your point. Strong images help to grab the audience’s attention. Video clips are also great tools to make points come alive, provoke a reaction or change the mood.

Share a joke 

Humour is a great tool to help you to grab people’s attention. Adding a few laughs into your presentation can break the ice, change the atmosphere and create a lasting memory. Even more so if the joke also helps to illustrate your key point.

Stimulate interaction 

Encourage your audience to get involved. They are far more likely to remember what you’ve been talking about if they can also describe it or interact with it. Ask your audience a question (and not just at the Q and A at the end). Maybe encourage the audience to consider a point in groups and to share their views with the room.

Keep it simple

Avoid jargon and cut out over complex facts and theories. Convey the key points in a simple manner. Present only what the audience really needs to know.

3 Tips to Develop an Effective Content Marketing Strategy!

Most businesses will at some point, consider creating a content marketing strategy in order to engage with customers. When you develop a content marketing strategy, you should start by thinking about your target audience rather than just looking internally towards your business. Here are a few tips to help you to develop an effective content marketing strategy.

Educational Content 

When it comes to your firm’s content marketing strategy, you should focus on creating well written content that is of educational value to your readers. If you are selling HR advisory services, for example, then you might consider producing content that provides your readers with useful tips on how to create certain HR policies or manage staff absences, etc. Your readers will then consider that you and your firm understand these areas and may potentially decide to use your services as a result.

Leverage your content

After you publish your content, you will need to promote it. Perhaps you could create a social media strategy whereby you publish your content to your company website, then post links to Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media pages so that people can share your content with their network. You may also want to share your content via an email newsletter or client update. The key is to find as many ways as possible of sharing your content and re-purpose it in order to maximise the potential readership.

The WIIFM concept

WIIFM stands for What's In It For Me? What that means is that regardless of what you are selling (product, service, etc), all that matters to your customers is that you have the ability to solve a particular problem that they are experiencing at that particular moment. The way that you phrase your marketing content has a tremendous impact on how that target audience reacts to what they are reading.

In today’s increasingly connected business world, content is becoming more important. Some clients are more likely to visit your website or social media page than your office premises. As such, creating the right content strategy for your business is key.

Monthly UK Tax Updates - May/June 2016

Changes Next Year for Public Sector Workers “Off Payroll”

It was announced in the March Budget that Finance Bill 2017 will include measures to change the rules for those workers supplying their services to public sector bodies via their own company. The current rules require the intermediary to consider whether or not the IR35 rules apply to the engagement, and if so apply PAYE and National Insurance (NIC) to the income paid via the intermediary company.

If the proposed changes go ahead the public sector body will be required to assess whether the IR35 rules apply and operate PAYE and NIC.

For these purposes public sector includes central Government departments, Local Authorities, the NHS, schools and other bodies such as the BBC.

Tax Relief for Travel Expenses For IR35 Workers

Another measure affecting such workers, and those in the private sector, concerns tax relief for travel and subsistence expenses. New legislation in the current Finance Bill 2016 seeks to deny relief for travel and subsistence expenses incurred by workers caught by the IR35 rules. The restriction will also apply to agency workers where there is supervision, direction and control (SDC) over the worker by the end user client.

According to updated HMRC guidance the SDC test will be the only test used to determine whether the new rules will apply and ignores the other employment status factors. The HMRC examples suggest that if there is no expertise within the end user organisation then there is likely to be limited SDC and the worker will continue to be entitled to relief for travelling to the client’s premises.

Possible New “Look Through” Entity Will Change Small Company Taxation

The Chancellor announced in his Budget Speech that the Government is considering further major changes to small company taxation following a review by the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS).

As in many small companies the directors are also shareholders the OTS believe that it would simplify matters if the shareholders of such companies were to be taxed on their share of profits made by the company in proportion to their shareholdings. In other words the shareholders would be subject to income tax in a similar way to members of a partnership or LLP and there would be no corporation tax paid by the company. This would clearly level the playing field between limited companies and unincorporated businesses. However it is likely to result in more tax payable than under the current rules!

We will monitor further discussions on this possible future change and keep you updated.

Changes to Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) Reporting

Following the abolition of monthly paper CIS returns from 6 April 2016 HMRC have indicated that some leniency will be allowed for late returns for the first three months of the new tax year. Contractors and other businesses required to operate CIS now have to submit their returns online.

It is proposed that from April 2017 contractors will also be required to verify subcontractors online.

Remember that it is not just mainstream contractors that are required to operate CIS. The system extends to property developers who pay plumbers, electricians, and others in the building trade. However CIS does not apply to home owners and property investors who renovate a property prior to renting out to tenants.

Thinking of Building Your Own House? You Can Reclaim The VAT

You can apply to HMRC for a VAT refund on building materials and services if you are building a new home, or converting a property into a home. In order to qualify the home must be separate and self-contained, be for you or your family to live or holiday in, and not be for business purposes (although you can use one room as a work from home office). Builders working on new buildings should zero rate their work anyway and you won’t pay any VAT on their services.

Where there is an existing dwelling on the site you will normally need to demolish the existing building, however it will count as a new build where a single façade is retained if that is a condition of the planning consent. You may also claim a refund for builders’ work on a conversion of non-residential building into a home, or a residential building that hasn’t been lived in for at least 10 years.

When you make your claim you must supply a copy of the planning permission, a full set of building plans, the invoices - including tenders or estimations if the invoice isn’t itemised, and proof the building work is finished. Please contact us if you need advice or assistance on this or any other VAT matters.

Scottish Taxes

In these newsletters we tend to focus on tax matters that apply generally throughout the UK. However, under powers devolved to the Scottish Government there is now a different system of tax for the transfer of property in Scotland instead of SDLT.

Please contact us if you are considering buying a property in Scotland. We will also keep you up to date with other Scottish tax developments from time to time.