Author: Bray Accountants

The Government seem intent on forcing the Self Employed to eventually file quarterly records but thankfully the timetable of this reform has been delayed and Businesses will not now be mandated to use the Making Tax Digital for Business system until April 2019 and then only to meet their VAT obligations. This will apply to businesses who have a turnover above the VAT threshold – the smallest businesses will not be required to use the system yet, although they can choose to do so voluntarily. We will be liaising with you in due course to discuss how to deal with these extra filing and bookkeeping requirements.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-tax-digital/overview-of-making-tax-digital

From April 2017 the tax relief given on Loan Interest for Landlords will gradually reduce in circumstances where without Loan Interest the Landlord would be a higher rate taxpayer, these rules are to be phased in over 4 years.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-finance-cost-relief-for-individual-landlords/restricting-finance-cost-relief-for-individual-landlords

Main items of interest to the majority of small businesses will be:

• Personal allowances and national insurance rates, please follow tax data information link above.
• Dividend allowance of £5,000 is to be reduced to £2,000 from April 2018.
• You can get up to £1,000 a year in tax-free allowances for property or trading income from 6 April 2017.
• The Corporation Tax rate has already reduced to 19% from April 2017 and is still proposed to reduce to 17% from April 2020.
• VAT registration limit remains at £85,000 and the deregistration limit £83,000.
• Indexation relief against Capital Gains Tax frozen from January 2018 for Limited Companies.

New rules on Personal Pension withdrawals and annuities were introduced in April 2015, we recommend consulting your IFA on the specific changes but contact us with a view to tax efficient timing of future contributions and withdrawals:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pension-changes-2015

The new CIS scheme, in operation since  April 2007, contains many penalties and risks to Contractors. For more information on how the scheme works, click on the link below for HM Revenue Customs guidance but preferably please contact us for a more detailed explanation. Beware of H M Revenue interpretation on self employed status, it is not law and incorrect, there have been many tax cases on this issue in the last couple of years which detail the current law. Also, care must be taken to ensure gross payment status is not lost through late payments of tax.

https://www.gov.uk/topic/business-tax/construction-industry-scheme