Tax-efficient advice for limited company directors.

Believe it or not, there are more than 4.7 million limited companies registered in the UK, including the 810,316 incorporations that signed up in 2020/21.

Making Tax Digital for income tax (MTD for ITSA) looks certain to affect sole traders and landlords from April 2024, following the recent news of a one-year delay.

This was the latest in a long line of delays and deferrals in the rollout of MTD, which was first proposed by then-Chancellor George Osborne in late 2015.

A chunk of time has passed since the self-employed income support scheme (SEISS) was launched in May 2020, following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first taxable grant, worth up to £7,500 in total, was paid out in August 2020. That was followed by a second grant of up to a total of £6,570 and a third grant, worth up to £7,500 in total.

Owning and letting out a holiday home, otherwise known as a furnished holiday let (FHL), has always been a popular way of investing and earning income.

Not only do FHLs enjoy many tax advantages over normal residential let properties, owners have an asset which they can use for holidays while it largely pays for itself.

Tax Card 2021/22

It’s not often that HMRC makes exceptions to its tax deadlines or late-filing penalties, but the past year has, as in so many ways, been different.

Between optional deadline deferrals, new payment schemes and temporary reliefs, keeping on top of the changes to the usual tax timetable hasn’t been easy.

My client has had a computation from HMRC for the CIS (Construction Industry Scheme) deductions they failed to deduct from payments made to a subcontractor for the current and last 6 tax years.

What about the tax paid by the subcontractor on this income via Self Assessment/Corporation Tax? Can this be taken into account?

With the ever-changing circumstances of 2020/21 it is hard to imagine that we are already close to the tax year end again.

Feels like we did nothing and went nowhere in the last 12 months!

I am selling a Furnished Holiday Letting and understand I can rollover the gain into another qualifying letting property. However, I am not anticipating buying a new property for a year or so. In the meantime do I still have to make a return under the 30 day reporting scheme and pay the capital gains tax?

I have a number of clients based in Northern Ireland (NI) who both supply goods to and buy from mainland UK and the Republic of Ireland (ROI) mainly on a wholesale basis. Please could you clarify the rules post-Brexit.

My client has been in dispute regarding a road traffic accident between one of his company’s lorries, and another VAT registered business’ lorry. A small claims court has judged in favour of the third-party business, and has awarded them payment for damages, including reimbursement of their legal costs. The third-party is a partially exempt business, and so they would like reimbursement for the net amount of their costs, plus the VAT – will the third party raise a VAT invoice to us for payment of those costs and can my client claim back any of the VAT?

If you are considering moving home in the second half of 2020/21, you are by no means alone.
In the month leading up to 8 August 2020, 149,000 properties were put on the market – the highest number since before the financial crash in 2008.

With everything that’s happened so far this year, it might be easy to forget your obligations to file a tax return for 2019/20 by midnight on 31 January 2021.
The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent economic crisis has caused chaos with businesses up and down the country, most of which closed entirely during April 2020.

Several years ago I separated from my wife but the divorce has now gone through. I still own half of the marital home but I have been living in rented accommodation since the separation. Can I claim that my old marital home is still my main residence for capital gains tax purposes when it is sold?

I intend to remarry and my girlfriend wants to give me a share of her current home after we are married. Apparently this was let for a time before my girlfriend made it her home. Would there be any capital gains tax advantage in doing this?

Even among those who follow good tax-planning practice and maintain forecasts running several years forward, it is unlikely that many foresaw the dramatic end to the 2019/20 tax year.

With the arrival of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown, the economy shrank a record 20.4% in April 2020, and 19.1% in the three months to May 2020.

Offering a company car as a benefit can be a valuable and attractive perk to any valued employee.

Unfortunately, it is not necessarily a tax-free perk and it may be liable for PAYE because HMRC considers the private use of a company car to be a benefit-in-kind.

The last few months of the tax year are the ideal time to pause and reflect, and to make sure you’ve organised your finances as efficiently as possible before the new tax year begins on 6 April 2020.

Many of my small company clients often have overdrawn director loan accounts. When considering minimising the beneficial loan charge, what interest can be taken into account to reduce or cancel the benefit charge?

My client is a surgeon who is currently employed by the NHS. During the year, he has attended various training courses to enable him to keep up to date with changes in the profession and gain new qualifications to further his career. Can he deduct the cost of attending these courses from his employment income?

Anne (aged 66) and Brian (aged 68) are a couple who could have started to draw their state pension a few years ago but they chose instead to keep on running their own trading company and defer taking it. From a look at their records for 2018/19, it’s clear that they both started to draw on their state pension in the year but with different effects on their income tax calculations for the year because Brian has received a lump sum but Anne hasn’t.