Book a call

Southside Accountants Wimbledon

RTI Round Up

Jul22

Real time information (RTI) has had a bumpy start. In brief these are the major problems and work-arounds discovered so far.

Annual PAYE Schemes

If you expect to pay all of your employees just once in the tax year, and all on the same date, you can register your PAYE scheme with the Tax Office as an annual scheme.

HMRC’s official guidance was that annual schemes only had to submit one FPS (full payment submission) under RTI for the month the payments were made, no nil EPS (employer payment summary) were required for the other 11 months of the year.

However, in practice any PAYE schemes registered as annual in 2013/14 are not acknowledged as ‘annual’ by the RTI system. This means nil EPS returns have to be submitted for every month when employees are not paid.

The RTI system will be fixed on 17 May 2013 to cope with registrations of annual PAYE schemes, but you need to wait until after that date to tell HMRC you want the PAYE scheme to be annual. In the meantime carry on submitting nil EPS returns.

Forms P45 and P46

Under RTI forms P45 and P46 are not required to be submitted, even if the starting or leaving date of the employee fell before you were mandated to use RTI. If you have employees who started or left in 2012/13, and you didn’t submit a P46 or P45 before 6 April 2013 you should:

If possible, enter the leaving date on your ex-employees’ 2012/13 form P14.
Do not submit revised P14s for 2012/13 if these have already been submitted.
Don’t include the ex-employee on your first FPS or EAS (employer alignment submission). The employment will be then be automatically ceased at 5 April 2013.
Include details of the new employee in the EAS and/or first FPS and either show a date of starting of 6 April or leave this field blank.

NI Numbers

You don’t need your employee’s NI number in order to pay him, or to submit the FPS report under RTI.

If the worker arrives without an NI number, you should complete the other data fields for that worker; name, address, and (if you need to check the worker’s eligibility to work in the UK) – the worker’s passport number. You should leave the NI number field blank if no NI number has been provided. The worker should be told to apply for an NI number as soon as possible.

You can run an NI number verification request (NVR) under RTI, but this should only be attempted once you have sent the first FPS under RTI. If HMRC finds an incorrect NI number on the FPS you will be informed. In that case the worker can be asked to check if the NI number they have provided is correct. This can be done by using the HMRC form CA5403.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.

Annual Sale of Intellectual Rights in relation to Tax

Jul15

Q. If my company buys the rights to the intellectual property I create in the form of blogs, websites and online presentations, is that treated as the sale of a capital asset in my hands subject to capital gains tax? If so, can I sell such intellectual property every year for £10,000, so the gain is covered by my annual exemption and I pay no tax?

A. There are two reasons why your plan won’t work:
i. You and your company are connected parties. Any transactions between you and the company must be valued at open market value. Is your blog etc. really worth £10,000 on the open market?
ii. The Taxman’s view is that transactions involving copyright will generally fall to be taxed as income receipts, not capital gains.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.

Can my employer help with Nursery Fees for my son?

Jul15

Q. Our son is now old enough to attend nursery. Can my company, as my employer, help out with the nursery fees?

A. Your company can provide you with childcare vouchers to be redeemed at registered child care providers, and the first £55 per week of vouchers will be tax and NI free. If both parents work for the company they can each get £55 worth of child care vouchers per week. However, if you pay tax at 40%, you can only receive £28 per week of vouchers tax free. Those that pay tax at the new highest rate of 45% (from 6 April 2013) can only receive up to £25 per week of tax free vouchers.

The company must offer childcare vouchers to all its employees who work at the same site, it cannot exclude any employees, but employees can opt out. However, only parents with children aged under 16 can qualify for childcare vouchers. There are a number of other rules which are set out in the HMRC booklet E18: How you can help your employees with childcare.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.

Q &A: Should I worry for VAT from disposal of Hair Saloon not previously registered for VAT?

Jul15

Q. I have put my hairdressing salon up for sale as I can’t face the hassle and cost of RTI. I am self-employed and not VAT registered, but the proceeds from the business sale will take me over the VAT threshold. Do I have to register for VAT and charge VAT on the sale of the business?

A. If you sell the business assets and goodwill together, so that the purchaser can pick up where you stop and carry on the business, it will be treated as being a transfer of a going concern and outside the scope of VAT. So you don’t have to charge VAT on the business sale or register for VAT. More information about transferring a business as a ‘going concern’ is given in the VAT leaflet no. 700/9: Transfer of a business as a going concern.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.

March Question and Answer Section

Jun10

Q. The Taxman has sent me a new PAYE code for 2013/14, which includes about £1000 of savings income taxed at 40%. I don’t know how he got that figure as I don’t have any savings, and I only draw dividends from my company up to the limit of the 20% tax band.

A. The Taxman has looked at the income reported on your tax return for 2011/12, of say £7,475 wages plus £35,000 gross dividends (total £42,475), and assumed you will continue to receive the same amounts of wages and dividends in 2013/14. However, in 2013/14 your tax free personal allowance will be £9,440 and the limit of the 20% tax band will be £32,010 (total £41,450). If you draw the same amounts from your company in 2013/14 as you did in 2011/12, you will be taxed on £1,025 at the higher rate (40% for salary, 32.5% for dividends). To avoid the higher tax rate you will need to restrict the amount you draw from your company in 2013/14, and tell the Taxman to amend your PAYE code on the basis of you estimated salary and dividends for the year.

Q. I run a small B&B which has three let bedrooms, my family uses the other two bedrooms of the property. How should I calculate how much of the property’s running costs relate to the B&B business?

A. The answer is to include all of the property’s running costs (power, rates and repairs) in your B&B accounts and take out, or ‘disallow’, an amount that relates to your family’s use of the property. This is called a private use adjustment. In many towns the private use adjustment for B&Bs has been agreed locally with the Inspector of Taxes as a monthly or annual rate. However, from 1 April 2013 national rates of private use adjustment have been set by the Taxman as follows:

  • 1 family member living in the premises: £350
  • 2 family members living in the premises: £500
  • 3 or more family members living in the premises: £650

Q. My family business is very traditional; the factory-floor workers are paid weekly, the management are paid monthly and the senior directors are paid quarterly. How will I report all these different pay dates under real time information (RTI)?

A. This is a problem, as the RTI system was designed on the basis that all employees on the same payroll are paid at the same time. Under RTI you must submit a report for the entire payroll called a Full Payment Summary (FPS), every time the employees are paid. Running the FPS with only say the weekly employees receiving pay will cause errors unless adjustments are done for those employees who are not being paid on that particular pay date. A solution may be to segment your payroll into weekly, monthly and quarterly runs, but you need to talk to your payroll software provider to check if that is possible, before you start to implement RTI.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.

Self-Employed Travel Expenses

Jun3

If you are self-employed you may have a number of customers you go to regularly to work at their premises. This could apply to mobile hairdressers, cleaners, gardeners, and even medical professionals who work at private clinics. The miles you drive to reach each of your customers from your business base are used to calculate the amount of travel expenses you claim in your business accounts.

This is all good, but the Taxman has recently argued in a tax case that where the business is based at the person’s home, that home-office can’t be treated as the starting point for travel when the work is performed almost entirely at customers’ properties. The Taxman has particularly challenged travel expenses claimed by doctors who work at private clinics and do not see patients at their home-office. The Taxman has tried to ignore the necessary preparation and report writing work the doctor has to perform at his home-office.

The Taxman has agreed that travel between customers is allowable, so the mobile hairdresser or cleaner who travels to several customers each day should be able to claim the majority of their travel expenses. However, travel from the home-office to say one private clinic and back home again is in question.

This doesn’t mean you should stop claiming the cost of travelling to customers, but to head-off any challenge in the future, you should record every business related journey; where it started, number of miles and the reason for the journey – who were you seeing. Using an estimate of your total business mileage for the year is no longer an acceptable method of calculating your travel expenses. You should also record what part of your business you conduct at your home-office, such as preparing estimates or writing reports.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.

Room Hire and VAT

May27

The letting of land is exempt from VAT unless it falls into one of the many exemptions from the exemption for VAT. One of those exemptions to the exemption is where accommodation is provided in hotels, inns, boarding houses and similar establishments, including rooms provided for the purpose of catering, i.e. an eating and drinking occasion.

If you hire a room in a hotel for a group function including a meal, and the hotel supplies the catering, the whole fee is subject to standard rate VAT. If the catering is supplied by an outside caterer, the Taxman used to take the view that the room hire would be exempt from VAT, whilst the catering cost would carry standard rate VAT (if the caterer was VAT registered). However, the Taxman changed his mind on this point in October 2011, and updated the VAT Notice 709/3: Hotels and holiday accommodation.

Unfortunately he didn’t tell anyone he had released a new version of that leaflet so few businesses were aware of the change in practice, and confusion reigned. Now the Taxman has issued some more guidance as HMRC Brief number 02/13.

That guidance says where a room in a hotel is supplied for the purposes of catering, whether or not the catering is supplied by the same establishment, the room hire is subject to VAT at the standard rate. If you run a hotel, pub or similar place that hires out rooms, and have got this wrong in the past, the Taxman has said he will not pursue you for the VAT which should have been charged. However, you need to get the VAT treatment right from now on.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.

Make the Losses Work

May20

The value of shares quoted on the stock market has risen recently. This may encourage you to sell some investments before the end of this tax year (5 April 2013) in order to use your annual capital gains exemption and to soak up any capital losses. Any gains covered by the exemption (currently £10,600 per person) or capital losses are free of capital gains tax.

We can’t advise you on what to sell, but we can help you calculate the level of your capital losses and potential gains. It is essential that you tell your financial adviser or stockbroker how much capital losses you have already realised, so future disposals can be made to meet the level of those capital losses.

If you have forgotten to declare a disposal which made a capital loss on your tax return form, there may be no harm done, but you need to submit a claim for the loss before it can be set against a later gain. The deadline for claiming capital losses is now four years from the end of the tax year in which the loss arose, so you can still claim for losses made in 2008/09 and later tax years. We can help you with these claims.

Don’t forget you can crystallise a capital loss on shares which you still hold, but are now worth nothing or almost nothing. This is called a negligible value claim.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.

Annual Payroll and RTI

May13

Under real time information (RTI) PAYE reporting, a Full Payment Submission (FPS) report is required to be made to HMRC every time an employee is paid, not just once after the end of the tax year as is currently the case. RTI will be compulsory for most employers from the first pay date following 6 April 2013.

Many one-person companies may wish to pay the director just once a year and avoid monthly RTI reporting. If you want to do this, you must first check that your payroll software will cope with an annual payroll, as many main-stream payroll software packages do not.

The second stage is to understand what reports HMRC will require under RTI. An annual payroll must be registered with HMRC. The current advice on the HMRC website says: “If all payments on which tax and NICs are due are paid to your employees annually in a single tax month, you can ask HMRC to be treated as an ‘annual payer’. You must use the same month every year, so if this changes or you start paying your employees more frequently, you will need to tell HMRC.”

There should be more guidance on the HMRC website about annual payrolls soon. If you do not register the payroll as being annual you will need to submit an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) to HMRC every month, which shows nil payments made to the employee.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.

May Key Tax Dates

May8

19/22 – PAYE/NIC and CIS deductions due for month to 5/12/2012

30 – Deadline for 2011/12 self assessment online returns to be filed if you are an employee and want tax underpaid to be collected by adjustment to your 2013/14 PAYE code (for underpayments of up to £3,000 only)

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.