A considerable proportion of our clients have financial year-ends running to either 31st March or 30th April, in common with a lot of other small/medium businesses in general. In practice that means that around this time of year many accountants start seeing their clients’ end-of year paperwork come into the office to be [...]

With most households having had to complete the 2011 Census forms just a couple of months ago, you’d think that the government had obtained enough raw data to keep the number-crunchers occupied for at least a couple of years. Unfortunately, as many forecourt retailers have discovered in the last few weeks, the official [...]

The actual and potential costs of “Health & Safety”

One of the less sensational announcements within the March Budget related to the government’s aim of cutting so-called ‘red tape’ and thereby helping small and medium-sized businesses to avoid unnecessary costs; a particular target being the dreaded “Health & Safety” regime, which is [...]

And so we had the Coalition Government’s first ‘regular’ Budget on 23rd March, awaited with great interest by fuel users and petrol retailers in particular – let’s just remind ourselves that as Mr. Osborne got up to speak, typical pump prices were around 133.9 ppl for Unleaded petrol, and 139.9 for Diesel, with [...]

Tax evaders could face up to 5 years detailed scrutiny from the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

HMRC are sending letters to an estimated 900 tax evaders as part of a new programme by the Managing Deliberate Defaulters (MDD), informing them that they are now under increased levels of personal scrutiny.

Under the new programme, the MDD [...]

Anyone reading the ‘News’ pages of February’s Forecourt Trader can’t have missed the biggest topic of the month – the imminent 1ppl Fuel Duty hike due in April; of course that ‘penny a litre’ increase will translate into a rather larger figure at the pumps – typically an extra 3 to 4 pence [...]

There is only one week to go until the 31 January deadline for you to submit your Self-Assessment tax return online, unless informed otherwise. Remember, the deadline is only later than this date if you have received your tax return or a letter telling you complete your tax return after 31 October.

There are only a [...]

Whenever the subject of accounts and record keeping crops-up in this column it tends to result in a bit of a yawn in some quarters; after all, everyone produces accounts in some form already, don’t they? It’s one thing to have ‘accounts’ – and we just can’t imagine anyone in forecourt retailing today [...]

Back to the grind! You’ve survived the Christmas and New Year festivities, not to mention the first proper ‘cold snap’ of the Winter [OK – for those of you in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North of England, we know that it was a bit more than just a ‘cold snap’ -] and [...]

A month later than usual, but we have crunched the pay numbers from September to see what forecourts were paying their hourly-paid staff. This is the thirteenth year in succession that we’ve done it, but for any readers not yet familiar with this report here’s a quick reminder of how we do it [...]