Wednesday 31 July 2013

VAT Mistakes

If your company makes a deliberate VAT mistake, which results in less VAT being paid over to HMRC than is correctly due, you as the director of that company can be issued personally with a penalty. This very rarely happens, but the VATman does have the power to impose such penalties where he can show the underpaid VAT was due to the dishonest conduct of one or more of the directors.

Two recent cases illustrate the types of situations where a personal penalty can be imposed:

Mr Brookes is the sole director of a building company. A VAT inspection found suppliers' invoices to support VAT inputs were missing. Brookes obtained 'copy' invoices from the main suppliers, but those 'copies' were found to be very poor forgeries. Brookes was served with a personal penalty of £43,753 which was 60% of the over claimed VAT.

Mr and Mrs Walker failed to submit eight successive VAT returns for their company. The VAT office issued estimated VAT assessments to the company which were less than the VAT eventually found to be due, and the Walkers did not challenge those estimated assessments. The Walkers were served with personal penalties totalling £194,214.

If you are getting in a VAT mess, ask us to help you out before things get really serious!

RTI for Seasonal Workers

Have you taken on casual workers this summer? Perhaps you are paying piece-rates for the amount of produce picked or packed by each person. Reporting such small and variable payments under the new RTI system is a significant hassle.

The RTI rules require you to report each payment to workers on or before the date of the payment. Fortunately you may be able to use one of these two concessions to ease your RTI reporting burden:

a) Where you pay your causal workers daily or more than once a week, but the amounts paid are less than £109 per person per week, you can send RTI reports to HMRC weekly; or

b) Where the total number of your employees, including casual workers, is less than 50, you can send your RTI reports to HMRC on a monthly basis.

Concession b) will only apply for payments made before 6 April 2014.

Your casual workers are likely to have no set working hours for each week. In effect they will be on a zero-hours contract; paid for the hours they work, but otherwise not at all. In such cases you should choose option D of hours worked on the FPS report under RTI.

The Government wants employers to report data on the hours worked by employees in order to prevent fraud in the Tax Credits system. Under Universal Credit the hours worked will not be relevant to the employee's claim, so in time when all claimants are moved from Tax Credits to Universal Credit, the requirement to report hours worked should be dropped.

Self-billing Change

The procedure of 'self-billing' is frequently used in the publishing and construction sectors, where a large business customer engages lots of smaller businesses as suppliers (eg authors or subcontractors). The customer issues self-billed invoices on behalf of the small suppliers, usually with the payment to each supplier.

If you are operating self-billing you must comply with the conditions set out in the VAT Notice 700/62: Self Billing. These conditions have recently changed, so make sure you download the latest version of the VAT notice from the HMRC website. In particular there is a new legal requirement to mark all self-billed invoices as 'SELF BILLING'.

The key requirement of self-billing is that the suppliers must actively agree to self-billing, and provide the customer with their VAT details (registration number and address). Those that do not sign a self-billing agreement must issue their own invoices to the customer.

When you operate self-billing you should review your self-billing agreements at least once a year. This involves checking with the supplier that their billing details are still correct, and whether their business is VAT registered or not. In the recent recession many businesses have deregistered for VAT but have carried on trading.

It is important to get the supplier's VAT details right, If you issue a self-billing invoice on behalf of a supplier, that includes VAT, when the supplier is not VAT registered, your business will over-claim VAT. This will result in penalties and interest for your business.

Your annual review of self-billing agreements does not have to be conducted all at the same time; the agreements can be reviewed on a rolling basis.

My Tax Return Catch-up

The Taxman has launched a campaign to persuade tardy taxpayers to submit their over-due tax returns for 2011/12 or earlier years. If you have a personal tax return form (or notice to complete a tax return) sitting in a drawer, and have been putting off the tedious task of completing it, now is the time to act.

The Taxman's campaign is called: My tax return catch-up. It was launched in July and will run to 15 October 2013. It is not open to those who operate outside the tax system in the so-called 'black economy', and have never received a tax return form or notice to submit a tax return.

All the outstanding tax returns must be submitted by 15 October 2013, which is also the due date for paying any tax due. If you can't pay all your outstanding tax by that date, you can ask for a time to pay agreement to spread the tax payment over several months.

The incentives for joining the tax return catch-up campaign include lower penalties for late submission of returns and late payment of tax. Just how much lower those penalties will be is not specified, the actual discount will depend on your circumstances.

If you, or a friend or relative, want to take part in the tax return campaign, that taxpayer first has to tell HMRC they want to join. This can be done online, by phone or post and we can do this on your behalf. We can also help with completing the outstanding tax returns, calculating the tax due, and negotiating for time to pay outstanding tax with the tax office. Remember submitting an overdue tax return can sometimes result in a tax repayment!

Monday 1 July 2013

RTI Relaxation Extended

The temporary relaxation of the RTI reporting requirements for small employers has been extended to 5 April 2014. It was due to apply only until 5 October 2013.

Under RTI you are supposed to send a full payment submission (FPS) report to HMRC every time you pay employees, on or before the date of payment. This could mean sending a FPS every week, or even every day if you pay some casuals daily.

The relaxation applies to employers with fewer than 50 employees who pay staff weekly, or more frequently, but who run their payroll once a month. These employers can submit their full payment submission (FPS) at the time of the payroll run. However, the FPS must reach HMRC by the end of the tax month (5th).

The Taxman's own figures show that one in six payments under RTI has been reported using the current relaxation. In spite of this strong evidence that the reporting relaxation is needed, HMRC has insisted that all employers will be required to make RTI reports on or before each payment day from 6 April 2014.

If you have still not sent any reports under RTI, you will shortly receive a letter from HMRC and possibly an estimated tax demand. Ask us for advice before paying any tax demanded!

Research and Development Claims

Did you know there is a tax relief for companies which invent stuff? The process of inventing and solving the associated problems is called research and development (R&D). Companies can more than double the tax deduction given for the costs of R&D.

The new 'stuff' could be a product, a material or a process which has been changed or improved. For example if you find a way of speeding up a production line, or changing the process to cope with a new type of material, the work to achieve that aim is R&D which should qualify for the tax relief.

Many innovative ideas don't actually work. That doesn't matter. The costs expended when working on your new idea are tax allowable as R&D, if you can show you were pushing the boundaries of knowledge or capability in the fields of science or technology.
Working on some types of computer programming can count as R&D, particularly where you are making previously unrelated computer systems work together. The key is that no-one else has done what you are trying to, or if they have achieved it, they have kept their discovery to themselves.

Talk to us about your innovative work. Even small costs are worth claiming as there is now no minimum claim for each year.

Expenses and Benefits Reporting

The deadline for submitting the annual returns of expenses and benefits (forms P11D and P9D) to HMRC is 6 July 2013.

The form P11D (P9D for those paid less than £8,500), is used to report the provision of benefits such as company cars or health cover to your employees, and to you where you are a director of your own company. Other benefits which may have to be reported include loans from the company to the employee/director, or the loan of assets such as a motorbike, boat or accommodation.

In theory all expenses paid to employees also need to be reported on the forms P11D. To avoid being taxed on those expense payments as income, the employee (or you on their behalf) has to make a claim for the amount paid to be treated as a valid tax deduction using a form P28 or P810, or by letter. This paper-chase can be avoided by applying for a dispensation from HMRC. We can help you with that.

Even if a dispensation is in place, any benefits provided such as; cars, fuel or health cover must be reported on the form P11D. Also class 1A NI must be paid by the employer at the rate of 13.8% on the value of the benefits provided, and reported on form P11D(b).

All of these forms can now be submitted online using an online service on the HMRC website. If you previously used the HMRC software: PAYE Basic Tools to submit forms P11D you now need to use this new online method, as PAYE Basic Tools does not include the P11D forms for 2012/13 or later years.

If you want to submit paper forms P11D and P9D you need to send them to:

HMRC (NIC&EO) Room BP2101
Lindisfarne House
Benton Park View
Longbenton
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE98 1ZZ

If you need and help or advice please contact us.