The Fizz! Blog

Can I save tax on my Audible subscription?

Are you a sole trader who only listens to things related to your business? You can save tax on the entire cost.

Are you a sole trader who listens to both things related to your business and other stuff? You can save tax on the percentage of the subscription that you think fairly reflects the business part.

Are you a limited company owner who only listens to things related to your business? The company can pay for the whole subscription and save tax on the lot.

Are you a limited company owner who listens to both things related to your business and other stuff? Unless the personal element is more or less incidental, you should just pay the sub yourself; there’s no provision equivalent to the sole trader one for somehow splitting it, and if the company pays for it then you’d have to pay tax on the cost. Fortunately, it’s hardly an expensive thing to have to pay personally.

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What does the abolition of the Furnished Holiday Lettings regime mean to you?

If you don’t own an FHL, nothing! And even for some people who do own one, not much. But for some owners, the impending end of their special tax regime will make a difference.

Historically, rental properties that tick the boxes to be classified in this way (broadly, available for rent most of the year, actually rented to holidaymakers most of the time, and not to the same person for an extended period) have received special tax treatment. From April 2025, that will no longer be the case.

The revisions will remove the tax advantages that furnished holiday let landlords have over other property businesses:

• At present, unlike other residential property income, a landlord can save tax on all the associated interest payments - owners of conventional Buy To Lets can save 20% at most. Individuals owning an FHL will face the same restriction.
• FHLs have had more generous Capital Allowance rules. But they’re going, and instead the owner will get the same “replacement of domestic items relief” that other property businesses have.
• Capital gains tax reliefs based on disposing of a business asset will no longer apply to FHLs.
• FHL income will no longer be included within relevant UK earnings when calculating maximum pension relief.
• At the moment you can effectively allocate the profits to either owner of a jointly owned FHL, but under the new regime they will have to be split according to normal ownership rules.  These rules refer to the underlying legal ownership of the property - you'll need to refer back to how the ownership was set up when you bought it, and your accountant can tell you what that means for your rental profits

If you own properties that currently qualify for the FHL tax regime, you should definitely consider if and how the changes are going to affect you. They may make no difference to you - but they’re definitely not going to make anyone better off.

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Small businesses aren’t responsible for tax evasion - tax evaders are

Back in September, a National Audit Office press release regarding tax evasion got a lot of coverage - in particular, its assertion that 81% of tax evasion was down to small businesses.

Two thoughts:

1. Tax evasion is down to tax evaders. It’s not somehow perpetrated by small businesses as a class. If a takeaway is using sales suppression software to hide income from HMRC, that tells us absolutely nothing about small businesses generally. It tells us that at least one person within that particular business is a criminal.
2. If 81% of tax evasion is down to small businesses, that means 19% must be down to larger businesses. Looking at the report, that means companies with sales revenue of between £10m and £200m a year (the report attributes zero tax evasion to businesses larger than that). This is more surprising! Businesses of that size generally have segregation of duties, external auditors, governance committees and so on. How on earth are they somehow managing to deliberately evade tax at an organisational level?

The second point (if the statistics are to be relied upon, anyway) is surely the more interesting story! If anything, you’d think 100% of tax evaders would fall into the “small business” category because that’s where checks and balances can be dodged.

In fairness, the report itself does drill into particular activities (like sales suppression software, and phoenixism), and it’s clear that HMRC are trying to look at those areas specifically. But headlines smearing small businesses generally are not especially helpful to anyone.

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