HLAS

MORE MONEY FOR THE NHS AND INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE BUDGET  Rishi Sunak received a “hospital pass” when he was appointed Chancellor and was required to deliver the first Budget in nearly 18 months within a month of his appointment.  He announced extra spending on roads, rail, broadband and other infrastructure projects as well as extra money for the NHS to help cope with the coronavirus epidemic. But what we were waiting to hear was where the extra money was going to come from? Had he found a “magic money tree”, or would tax and borrowing have to increase? The Office [...]

At Harris Lacey and Swain we are always trying to encourage clients to embrace technology to better their businesses. Now is the the time, to save time.What exactly is Receipt Bank? Receipt Bank is an award winning, data entry application taking businesses by storm. Saving business owners hours in admin time, it’s used to manage receipts, invoices, and other documents that businesses depend on to keep accurate, secure financial records and what’s more, it can be done in just one click. So simple! How does it work? The best news is that there’s an app and, if you’ve read our [...]

With the self-assessment deadline looming – if you are late to the party, you should be thankful you dropped in that box of chocolates to your accountants before the Christmas break. (If not, shame on you!) We’ve decided to create a helpful guide to help you not only become one of our favourite clients, but to avoid stress, errors and more importantly, an unexpected tax bill with only days to spare before its due. Tip one. Failure to prepare, is preparing to fail. But we didn’t need to tell you that! It sounds like the most simple advice but preparing [...]

As a car loving accountant, this is a subject close to my heart on two counts; great cars and low tax! In the next tax year (2020/2021) having a company electric vehicle will become much more attractive. The Benefit in Kind (BIK) charge will drop to 0% and only rise to 2% in tax year 2022/2023. What does this mean in the real world? A Porsche Taycan costing £100,000 would give you a benefit of only £2,000 per year, which means a tax cost of £800 as a 40% tax payer. Compare this to a petrol or diesel car costing [...]

If your business operates in R&D, you could save thousands of pounds each year.  What are R&D tax credits?  R&D tax credits are a government tax incentive designed to encourage productive innovation in UK businesses by rewarding limited companies that are actively making a difference to improve their product performance, manufacturing processes and streamlining their services to be more efficient and reduce their carbon footprint.   Is my business eligible? If your business is liable to Corporation Tax and undertakes R&D, you could claim back on your expenditures. Examples of R&D activity include: Improving product performance and manufacturing processes by [...]

The wait is over for successful Win a Shop candidates       With a fantastic response to the Win a Shop competition, Princes Quay called in the expertise of the judging panel and after a long morning of deliberating – the semi-finalists have been announced. Centre Manager, John Magee was joined by Hull BID’s Kathryn Shillito, FEO’s Jan Brumby, local entrepreneur Jonathan Elvidge and property expert, Mickola Wilson from Seven Dials Fund Management. The team had some very tough decisions to make with a wide range of high-quality entries from delis and cafes to clothing and furniture brands, but the final [...]

  HMRC are implementing Making Tax Digital (MTD) to streamline the way businesses report their finances, bringing with it a bank of new software, regulations and questions. According to the Making Tax Digital Monitoring Businesses’ Awareness of MTD report little over 6 weeks ago , 20% of VAT registered businesses still have no idea when they plan to sign up, and 11% still do not know what MTD is. Now that we have passed the starting line of the 1st April, it is important to get our heads out of the sand and into the cloud.   There are two [...]