Employment Tax Expert

This employment tax expert warns all readers of the increased use of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (PoCA) by police and government agencies that has been highlighted by the recent case of Kishor Doshi, director of Sunderland accountancy and taxation firm Otax, who is now facing a custodial sentence after being found guilty of tipping off a client about a police investigation.

According to the Sunderland Echo Doshi admitted he rang and told a client that his office had received a police order commanding him to hand over the man’s accounts just hours after he discovered it.

The order relates to a money laundering investigation by Northumbria Police’s Economic Crime Unit – called Operation Galapagos – into the dealings of the client.

Doshi told the hearing at Newcastle’s Moot Hall that he did not know the Production Order related to a criminal investigation and was supposed to be kept secret by law. He claimed he thought it was part of an ongoing civil inquiry that his client had a right to know about. The accountant of 23 years told the court he only read the first two paragraphs of the Production Order before he made the first in a series of phone calls.

This is, for those of you who are unaware, an offence under the PoCA 2002

Sentencing has been adjourned until next month.

Following a recent case in the First Tier Tribunal, a potential National Insurance Contribution (“NIC”) refund could be due to you as an employer and to your employees if you:

• pay a business mileage payment of less than 40p per mile

• pay a lump car sum allowance to your employees for the use of their own private vehicles

• have retained records to verify the business mileage

• there is no direct link between the lump sum car allowance and salary

Refunds can extend back six complete tax years and run into thousands of £’s so what do you need to do now?

To quote a Russian meerkat – it’s simples: contact us today on 0800 917 9176 to register your interest – no protective claims are necessary at this stage – it’s just a ruse by some organisations to make you panic but don’t be fooled, contact the employment tax expert today

Contact us on 0800 917 9176

Most of us will have heard about the much heralded “time to pay arrangements” that allowed businesses that were having trouble paying their tax liabilities, time to pay. Good idea you may think, better to wait for the money than not see it at all but the latest regime seems a little different.

Time to pay so long as you are not currently in difficulty – so crystal balls and management accounts at the ready because they are tightening to an unbelievable degree the criteria for acceptance. I always come across businesses in the middle of an employer compliance review bullishly telling me that HMRC won’t put them out of businesses – it’s absolute rot and if you believe this to be the case you are skating on very thin ice. For those of you that would like to fact up on this point, it has been stated that in the last six months HMRC alone are responsible for 43% of company winding up orders!

So the moral is remove you’re head from the sand, make sure your records are up to date and if you think you’re going to have a problem, don’t leave it and please don’t be a member of the merry band that fools themselves day in and day out in business by convincing themselves and others that things are alright with sales funnel charts – unless someone has signed on the dotted line they can’t be counted as a) a client and b) money in the bank

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!!!