The Fizz! Blog

Make sure you download online invoices and statements

It's a legal requirement to retain business records - like purchase invoices and receipts - for six years or so after the end of your accounts year.  This used to be pretty straightforward when we all received all of our bills on paper.  But these days, lots of businesses supply us with electronic bills, and increasingly those businesses don't actually send them to you, but invite you to download them.

The problem is, the opportunity to download them doesn't always last for ever.  BT bills, for example, only stay online for six months.  If you've not downloaded them by then, they're gone.  So, download them.  It doesn't matter if you don't print them out - we run a pretty much paperless office ourselves - but save them somewhere secure and backed up.

Right, just going to download all our phone bills now!

www.fizzhq.com

Software - is it "goods" or "services"?

This was the question asked at a recent VAT tribunal, and I think I'd have got it wrong.

When you register for VAT, you can reclaim VAT on services you've purchased in the six months before registration and goods you've purchased in the three years before registration.  Usually it's clear whether something is a service (like legal work) or goods (like a van).  But if there's any debate, and you bought the thing more than six months ago but less than three years, you'd obviously like it to be classified as goods so you can get the VAT back.

So, that was what the company involved in the case did.  They claimed the VAT back on some software because it was a physical thing on a CD, in a box, with a manual.  I think that's what my instinct would have been too.  But the tribunal disagreed.  Despite the physical existence of the thing, the tribunal decided that the software was a service, not a good.  Worth bearing in mind if a business is yet to register for VAT but is contemplating serious spend on software.

www.fizzhq.com

HMRC takes hard line on directors - quite rightly

I'm sure we must have noted here before the increasing ease with which a commercial business can churn out a meaningless or misleading press release and get it more or less copied and pasted directly into the newspapers.

A story in The Independent today under the headline "HMRC takes hard line on directors" is pretty typical of that:

A sharp increase in disqualification proceedings launched against company directors for failure to pay tax undermines HM Revenue & Customs' insistence that it is taking a more sympathetic approach to businesses facing cashflow problems, independent financing company Syscap has claimed.

There has been a 24 per cent increase in the number of directors facing disqualification proceedings for non-payment of company tax, according to Syscap...

...Though HMRC is now giving struggling firms more time to pay tax, Syscap said the figures suggest that HMRC is increasingly prepared to see individual directors taken to court.

Yes, HMRC endeavours (or at least claims to endeavour) to take a sympathetic approach to sound businesses experiencing cashflow problems via the Business Payment Support Service.  But that hasn't got anything at all to do with whether they prosecute directors over non-payment of company tax.

The first system is designed to help companies run prudently and honestly, the second system to deter individuals from running companies either recklessly or dishonestly.  There's no overlap between those two groups of taxpayers at all.  If a director has done something that leads to a court convicting them and disqualifying them from acting as a director in future, it would have been wholly wrong for HMRC to have taken a sympathetic approach.  If HMRC see a director wilfully acting in a dishonest way, it's hardly appropriate to offer to help.

But I guess that doesn't matter to the authors of the study and the journalist, since they've got a good headline out of it and avoided the need to write anything imaginative or thoughtful.

HMRC - please continue to be sympathetic to honest, prudent directors, and entirely unsympathetic to dishonest or reckless ones.

www.fizzhq.com

Thame Lunch Club

We've a new website for Thame Lunch Club, a long-established group.

Thame Lunch Club (TLC) is a networking group for people working in professional services in and around Thame, in Oxfordshire.  Attendees are generally from areas like accountancy, law, banking, surveying, estate agency and the like.  Sometimes we let people with proper, useful jobs come as well!  There’s no limit on the number of people from a single profession who can attend a lunch.  There’s no formal timetable for the meeting, and no requirement (or opportunity) to stand up and talk about your business.  It’s simply an opportunity to eat, chat and have fun.  TLC is a very informal group, with an emphasis on regular attendance, socialising and enjoyment.

We meet once a month, usually in the Rising Sun or House of Spice in Thame.   Usually attendance is between 12 and 15 people at each lunch during the year, with maybe 25 people at our Christmas do.  However, numbers by themselves are not the aim, and we prune our circulation list on a regular basis so that we don’t trouble non-attenders with emails for an event they’re not really interested in.  The group is aimed at people who are keen to put some time and commitment into building strong, long-term and hopefully profitable business relationships.

The lunches are organised by Greg Lovett of Fizz Accounting and Chris Stocker of Stocker & Co, Solicitors.

Have a look here at some of the businesses that regularly attend.

If you’d like to be added to the email list for the group – or if you’ve any questions about it – please drop Greg a line at [email protected]