Not long to go now until the end of the month.
This of course means not long to go until the Personal Tax Return deadline looms.
Don’t forget the Partnership Tax Return also needs doing!
Get in touch if you need assistance.
It’s not too late…….
For those of you who have missed the paper filing deadline for Personal Tax Returns, the end of January represents your last chance to get your Tax Return in on time.
If you need help applying for an online code or if you have any queries about what needs to go on your return don’t hesitate to get in touch.
If you would like a free informative chat about your tax affairs in general then drop us an email at info@rtaccountants.co.uk to arrange a meeting.
“Get things right from the start for maximum chance of success.”
This is the message we will be putting across to 40,000 entrepreneurs at the Start Up Business Show in Earls Court this week.
It is vitally important to have everything in place from day zero to ensure that:
I was reading the results of a recent CCH survey which indicated that a high percentage of SME’s were now demanding a good online accounting package from their accountant. I thought this was interesting, as only a small handful of our clients actually use an online software package, until I realised that the ‘survery’ was probably more of a marketing piece than an actual independent survey. Lesson learned – don’t believe everything you read online.
That being said I am not against online accounting packages, in fact for the right client they can be a great thing. The key is to make sure that it is right for the client in question.
We have recently had clients sign up for Xero. The type of clients include web designers, PR agencies, and young entrepreneurs. Our older client base would probably not be best served by such a leap of faith such as using online accounting software!
We are currently able to offer Xero at a discounted price for clients.
Get in touch for a quotation.
Legal bit: Other online accounting packages are available. (but aren’t half as good…….!!!)
I saw this article, very thought provoking.
T his time last year, most people thought interest rates would have risen by now. The consensus forecast was for around 2.5 per cent. So much for that. On Thursday, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee decided to leave the Bank rate at 0.5 per cent.
It has been 0.5 per cent for more than two years – so long that people appear to have forgotten just how extraordinary it is. I have printed out and stuck up on the wall beside my desk a chart sent to me by the analysts Church House Investment Management. It maps the Bank rate or equivalent back to 1694. And it ensures that I don’t forget what extraordinary times we live in, by showing that the rate has never been this low before. Never.
Over the last 300-odd years, the floor for the Bank rate has been 2 per cent. That’s four times higher than our current rate. This is something worth keeping in mind (e-mail me and I’ll send you the chart to print out too).
Why? Because if you remember that rates are at an all-time low, and have been for more than two years, you won’t get conned into thinking that anything in the UK, or indeed the global financial system, is normal when it just isn’t. You also won’t get seduced into buying shares in any of our big banks.
UK banks analyst Jonathan Pierce left Credit Suisse this week. On his way out, he sent a closing e-mail to his clients – posted by Neil Hume on FT Alphaville. In it, he noted that this is a time “of considerable uncertainty” (something of an understatement) and pointed out why.
His particular concern is “tail risk in bank credit portfolios”: that the banks have rather more problems with their loans than they are admitting to.
I’ve written before about the way that UK banks appear to be dumping good loans but rolling over bad loans in orderto make good their capital ratios. They need to have fewer loans on their books but they can’t get rid of the bad ones without writing them down – which they clearly don’t want to do – so they dump the good ones instead.
However, Pierce chucks an interesting number into the mix. If things are getting so much better, he says, “why are there £110bn more interest-only mortgages today than in 2007, despite lower rates and tighter new lending criteria?”
The obvious answer is that, to avoid having to take losses on them, banks are converting the repayment mortgages of homeowners in trouble into interest-only mortgages. That cuts their payments and makes it less likely they will default in the short term. It also means their loans can still be counted as “good” loans.
The idea that the banks all have problem loans that are not officially recorded is not new. But, again, we shouldn’t get so used to the fact that we forget that its scale is utterly abnormal.
A private equity friend tells me of one of our megabanks coming to his team to try to sell £1bn-worth of second-grade consumer debt. The bank had valued it at 85 per cent of face value. His team verbally valued it at 35 per cent.
They were asked not to submit a bid: as far as the banks are concerned, if you don’t acknowledge something, you can just keep kicking it down the road in the hope it somehow stops being a problem. It is always better to delay marking something down than to actually mark it down, particularly if doing so means you end up needing to raise more capital.
My point here is not just that our banks are probably still in a great deal of trouble (even before a Greek default). It is that they remain entirely opaque. We can’t possibly understand their risks. As Fundsmith’s Terry Smith points out, “in an age with complex derivatives and structured products”, most bank risk levels are not only incomprehensible to investors but to management too.
Given the number one rule of investing – if you don’t understand it, don’t buy it – that seems reason enough to steer clear. The truth is that investing in bank shares these days is effectively to invest in a government-sponsored credit hedge fund. And you wouldn’t do that.
But there’s more. So far, banks and bankers have got away pretty lightly from the crisis. That’s not to say they will keep doing so. Right now, not only is our government about as broke as a government can be without actually being bankrupt, but the public now knows there are hordes of people in London earning £1m a year for doing a pretty average job.
That means that the debate about how bankers should be paid, how banks should be taxed and how the sector should be regulated has probably only just begun.
The unpredictability – and likely lower returns – that come with all of this should be the last straw for bank share-holders. If you aren’t out already, now would be a good time to get out.
Merryn Somerset Webb is editor-in-chief of Money Week. The views expressed are personal.
Michael Barton CEO Rotherham Taylor
Accountants are great for coming up with little pearls of wisdom when you wouldn’t expect it. Not all accountants are skilled at this however, just the good ones that break the mould.
I once worked with an Accountant called Frank (RIP) who came up with the classic line whilst training me, “Debit is nearest the window!”. This stood me in good stead until they rearranged the office furniture one day…..
Michael Barton, CEO, came up with another great line a few years ago that is still relevant today. Rotherham Taylor as a firm of qualified chartered accountants are sometimes, wrongly, compared to firms of unqualified accountants who have never passed a relevant exam in their life. As a result of this, not having to pay training costs, and not having to pay regulatory costs, these firms of ‘Cowboys’ are able to charge clients less. Michaels response to this, and this is where his pearl of wisdom comes from, is “would you send your children to an unqualified Doctor?”.
The answer back from the client or prospective client is 100% no. So why then would you consider letting an unqualified person look after your business finances?
Cost should never be an issue when considering advice, and it is true when they say ‘you get what you pay for’.
The ACCA and ICAEW have lobbied the government for years to protect the term accountant, and this is welcomed. Until something is done about it some businesses will be unaware that their advisor is unqualified and will continue to be paying not very much for not very good advice.
The onus is therefore on firms like us to go the extra mile for our clients and deliver the goods!
Once a quarter I travel down to London on the train and spend the day at ACCA head office on Lincolns Inn Fields to attend the Practitioners Panel.
Having been on the panel for more than 3 years now I still find it really useful to attend and participate.
We meet up to discuss current issues surrounding practitioners and get to find out about recent HMRC consultations and initiatives. The Panel also have the opportunity to contribute to ACCA publications and agree on the content of forthcoming courses.
One subject that has been on the agenda ever since I joined the panel is Access to Finance and issues facing practitioners and their clients. The majority of stories and experiences relayed in the meetings are full of negative experiences of how banks are not lending and how clients are constantly being turned away due to ‘not meeting the banks criteria’.
Where there is a will there is a way however, and stories are being shared about new ways of accessing finance and how clients have been successful in exploring such avenues.
One alternative method of accessing finance that seems to be grabbing everyone’s attention recently is peer-to-peer funding., and in particular www.zopa.co.uk.
It is a way of bypassing mainstream funding whilst still obtaining fairly competitive rates.
Email me if it’s something you want to find out more about: simon@rtaccountants.co.uk
