Author Archives: admin

We have it on good authority that HMRC is focusing a campaign on restaurants, takeaways and street food businesses with a number of taskforces concentrating on this sector. HMRC have successfully used taskforces in the past to collect tax from the building sector and public houses. The Revenue believe that the catering sector are more […]

As the festival and event season is upon us, it is important that we all pay our teams the statutory living wage. The rates were increased by the Government with effect from April 2019. The minimum wage that you should be paying your team are shown below.   Age 2019 rate Increase Over 25 £8.21 4.90% […]

  Up & Coming Grant Funding From April 2019 Grant Programmes will be released for certain job creating projects for SME’s with less than 250 employees.   Business Growth Programme Business Development grants of up to £170,000 are available for: Market development costs Refurbishment of business premises Capital equipment These grants are available for most […]

The catering sector can sometimes benefit from tips received from customers and unfortunately there are some tricky tax rules which must be applied to any tips or gratuities received. Tax is payable on income from employment and unfortunately HMRC consider tips to be income from employment. We often see restaurants adding a service charge at […]

Dan Fox and Andrew James ran a session on tax mitigation and business growth strategies at the inaugural NCASS Congress. We touched on a number of ideas during the session which we are going to expand on in the coming weeks as they will be relevant to many caterers. One question that a delegated asked […]

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF INCORPORATION     Advantages Disadvantages Limited liability: but note personal guarantees.     The liability of the shareholders on the winding up of a company is limited to the nominal value of the shares they own (for example, if a shareholder owns 10 shares of £1 each, the extent of his […]

Financial reporting standard 105 (FRS 105) was devised for micro entities to enable them to simplify their accounts. Companies were able to prepare accounts under FRS 105 for year ends starting after 1 January 2016. Some accountants have tried to encourage clients from adopting FRS 105 and have recommended that clients adopt FRS 102 1A. […]

In a recent article the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales have asked the Revenue to delay the roll out of making tax digital for VAT purposes which is due to become into play for most VAT registered businesses for their VAT return periods starting after 1 April 2019. The Institute’s research shows […]

Small businesses with annual sales of over £85,000 will be required to file their VAT returns digitally for all VAT periods starting on or after 1 April 2019. Businesses with sales of less than £85,000 who file VAT returns are exempt from this requirement until 2020. This is potentially the biggest shake up to the […]

The flat rate scheme is a way of making your accounting and VAT records easier to keep, by allowing you to apply a fixed percentage to your gross sales to calculate the VAT due. The percentage that you apply depends on the sector which your business falls into. Benefits of the flat rate scheme It […]