Watson Knipe Blog

It is important to understand what Capital Gains Tax is and the changes that were made to this in 2017.  Capital Gains Tax is a tax that taken from any profit that you make when you sell (or ‘dispose of’) something (an ‘asset’) that has increased in value. It is not based on the amount of money you receive.

It is important for businesses to understand the changes that will be taking place over the coming years as a result of the Autumn Budget 2017. This will help with planning your finances and will allow you to be prepared when these come into force. We have summarised five key changes that you need to be prepared for going forward.

This blog gives a summary of five key changes which will impact personal tax following the Autumn Budget 2017.

Chancellor Philip Hammond presented his first Autumn Budget on Wednesday 22 November 2017.

It’s very quickly approaching the deadline for submitting your businesses self-assessment tax return for the last tax year, this covers the period  6 April 2016 and ended on 5 April 2017. 

We love to work with a start-up business; it’s fantastic to help them at the initial stages and then watch them grow. We started working with a new business last year that was setting up a shopfitting company. Our client had previously been employed and had been made redundant; he took this as an opportunity to set up his own business.

We have written this case study to illustrate how we work with businesses that are ambitious to grow. We started to work with this new client, electrical contractors, who have grown quicker than they anticipated and they wanted to gain more support to keep control of their finances.

We were contacted by a Consultant and his wife to help them with personal tax planning. The Consultant worked for the NHS and provided private healthcare services in his own time. This resulted in more financial considerations than they anticipated as he was already in the higher tax bracket income-wise.

We have a lot of experience working with landlords helping them to keep in control of their tax obligations if they own one or more rental properties.

We work with a lot of people that operate their businesses as sole traders. For some, this business structure works well, and they can continue to work like this for as long as they want to.

For all business start-ups, one of the biggest expenses can be buying or leasing premises. Before you jump straight in, have a think whether you need premises or if there is an alternative option that may help keep overheads down until your business starts to grow.

Once you have decided on Company structure, whether to be VAT registered or not and opened a bank account then there are a few more things you may want to consider at these early stages.

If you decide you want to start a new business, it’s usually because you have a skill, product or service that you are passionate about. You want to offer this to other people and more importantly, use this passion to earn a living.

In 2015, the government first announced that it would be making tax digital for businesses. In the Spring Budget 2017, more information about this initiative was shared. We have written this article to explain who will be affected and some of the benefits of this change.

Over the past few years, there have been several changes to tax rules for residential landlords. This means that anyone investing in buy-to-let properties either for the first time or as they build their portfolio should take the time to understand the impact on their potential earnings from a rental property.

In 2016, it was announced that Class 2 NICs (National Insurance Contributions) would be abolished from April 2018. This was again mentioned in the Spring Budget 2017.  Class 2 NICs are paid by individuals that are self-employed.

There are lots of different reasons for HMRC deciding to investigate a business and review the amount of tax that has been paid. If you are subject to a tax investigation it can be a very stressful process and time-consuming.

The law on pensions has changed and even small businesses must now enrol employees in a workplace pension - a process known as 'auto-enrolment.

A new Budget is always eagerly awaited by small businesses, and with news of a revaluation of business rates, this is a worrying time for many SMEs.

The recent Budget made changes to the support available to help pay for childcare in the UK, but also added new levels of confusion, making it harder to work out what individual households are entitled to.