Employment Tax Expert

The Time to Pay arrangements that have helped many a business struggling with cashflow may be a target for cutbacks in the Budget next week. There have already been moves to place restrictions on those wishing to delay payments in respect of £1m by placing requirements on these companies to be reviewed by one of a panel of approved accountants, these then provide a report to support or otherwise the companies claims. However, this latest rumour could cause a lot more problems with the economy still fragile but in order to get this into context, this employment tax expert must also state that they disagree with time to pay arrangements for PAYE, VAT and CIS deductions – controversial you may think but pause for a moment – this money has never belonged to and never will belong to the company, the Company is simply an unpaid collector of taxes and the payments should definitely not be part of Company cashflow. This apart Corporation Tax and Self Assessement tax should still have a strictly controlled ability to apply for time to pay arrangements as this could mean the difference between companies staying afloat and getting through the recession and folding. These latter points cannot be underestimated, so long as the company in question represents something that is a viable proposition, so fingers crossed the sweeping rumour that Time to Pay arrangements will go unilaterally is just that … a rumour!

You may recall from earlier posts the concerns raised over HMRC and their report on “lost” revenue and people paying the “right” amount of tax – well tax investigations, employer compliance visits, tax enquiries have all now taken a sinister turn as it has been announced (via a Parliamentary answer) that HMRC are using anti-terror laws to spy on those suspected of not paying the “right” amount of tax. 5492 requests were granted to HMRC officers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000.

The RIPA powers enable officers to watch or follow suspects, and use informants to snoop on them. The statistics indicate that the number of cases in which HMRC has used the anti-terror powers has increased by approximately 75% in the past four years.

The concern here is that these powers are used as a weapon of first resort and not what they were intended for. We have all heard before about these powers being abused by councils across the land, spying on householders and their dustbins, dog fouling, school catchment area claims etc – so watch out, you don’t know who may be watching you or someone you know!

So we have the pre budget report today when we theoretically find out the true scale of the national debt and what the government propose to do about it. However, as always seems to be the practice these days, it’s not just a question of looking into a crystal ball but also doing a bit of brain trainer to recall exactly what was mentioned previously that will also be brought in now – following this so far?

In yester year we used to just have a Budget and that was relatively straight forward but now we have the PBR which allows whoever is in power to map out their budgetary vision for the next x number of years. However, this time round this has been blown out of the water somewhat by the fact that we are due an election in June 2010 and David Cameron has come out and said he will have another Budget within 50 days of being in office – still following?

So pin back your ears today as there may be more to this one than meets the eye. For all you practitioners out there we know the devil is in the detail, pages and pages of it in fact to wade through in order to get past the smoke and mirrors but the bottom line is a really interesting point – pre election budget v. the prudent protector of our economy (where we are all in this together and we all have to make sacrifices – yeah right, anyone forgoing their £m plus bonus – hardly think so,  let’s completely muller SME’s, working/middle class etc as usual) and this employment tax expert for one gets well hacked off with the smoke screen of “green” issues – saving the planet or an excuse for increased taxes – mmmm that’s a difficult one

Carry on watching for updates ….

And now for something completely different. Let’s face it we all need a break from the constant doom and gloom and last night I went to watch a fantastic show “Dancing in the Streets”. This was Motown at it’s best and there was such a brilliantly diverse audience made up of every age range possible yet they all had one thing in common – for a couple of hours they were completely absorbed into the show and transported back to the 60′s. We had a group of teenagers sat behind us and it was just amazing listening to them, they thought they were brilliantly cool knowing the songs and they were amongst all these older people – I mean what did these old timers know about this music – well if anything optimised how to bring all age ranges together it was this show and society should take a note of this – when everyone started getting up dancing and singing these kids were genuinely amazed (albeit there were a few dad’s dancing at a wedding routine but guess what they couldn’t care less they were enjoying themselves) and went with the flow, you had to be there to see the theatre rock it was truly something special.

Now on the subject of perception of age – wait for this classic – you know what it’s like you’re in the office and someone starts a coversation about middle age and when this era starts. Well we had been saying that compared to our parents and grandparents middle age was something that happened a lot later these days – oh how wrong you can be – in walked my new admin assistant who has just turned 17 and when asked when middle age started she announced 30!!!

Yes that’s right – in this era of doom and gloom both employers and employees can save a lot of money and not be tied to ever increasing car benefit and car fuel benefit charges simply by looking at how they provide cars to their employees. Don’t get confused with ever increasing taxation on these benefits, in the name of “going green/saving the planet, enviromentally friendly” it’s all crap – we’ve a national debt to feed and it’s got a monstrous appetite – remember this when it comes to the Pre Budget report.

So remove yourselves from this farce, it’s a fantastic idea, tailored specifically to your company and with HMRC approval, employees love it and even better you as the employer keep control and meet your duty of care and corporate manslaughter responsibilities.

Not come across it before? Thought about it some years ago but were a bit afraid of it – well those employers that weren’t have saved £millions – now don’t tell me that you wouldn’t be interested in that. So if you have a company car fleet or are even running a cash for car scheme and want to join the band of smiling employers and employees and find out more about employee car ownership schemes then call us on 0800 917 9176