There’s little that owner-managers can do to avoid the reality that a recession is well and truly here. Many of our clients are reporting that the number of tenders that they are sending out has dramatically reduced and new contracts are becoming more scarce as each week passes. With this in mind, this week’s newsletter includes the first of our recession busting tips, which we build on as the weeks progress.

As we enter these recessionary times, the vast majority of owner-managers do not know what their real break-even point is. Your “real” break-even point is the level of sales that you have to achieve in order to create enough margin to cover your overheads and tax and leave enough aside for you to live on. With mortgage payments increasing your break-even point might be going up whilst your sales are coming down!

A detailed version of this article can be received by clicking here.

October sees renewal notices going out for this year’s tax protection scheme. With HM Revenue and Customs becoming more commercial, the overall amount of additional tax raised by HMRC in the last year from all personal and business tax enquiries has risen dramatically by 62% from £5.657billion to £9.167billion according to tax protection scheme provider CCH.

And of course, this figure excludes the costs to those businesses of paying professional advisers to deal with the enquiry. For more details of the A4G tax protection scheme, please email dawn@a4gsolutions.co.uk

As of yesterday all personal bank accounts have guaranteed protection of £50,000 from the government. Small businesses also have this protection on their bank accounts to this limit. Please remember that this figure is per banking "group" meaning that accounts in two different banks owned by the same group will only have total cover of £50,000. Full details of protection available and the definition of a "small" business can be found on the FSA’s website by visiting www.fscs.org.uk/consumer/Latest_News/

"When you are going through hell, keep going"

Winston Churchill