HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) plan to phase out paper VAT returns from April 2010.  After that date, if your turnover exceeds £100,000 or if you are newly VAT registered you will have to submit your returns online and pay electronically.

The only disadvantage of online filing is that direct payment must also be made electronically.  If you wish to continue paying by cheque, you will have to pay it in at a bank or building society that accepts Bank Giro credits, using a Bank Giro credit slip from a book that can be ordered from HMRC.

If you are not yet set up to file online you should visit the HMRC website as soon as possible at https://online.hmrc.gov.uk/registration or for further advice please contact your client manager who will be  happy to help.  

If you intend to give to charity this tax year, don’t forget to claim “Gift Aid”.  The charity will then be able to claim from the government a further 28p for every £1 that you donate at no further cost to you if you are a UK taxpayer.  Therefore this really increases the value of your donation and the benefit for the charity of your choice.

Not only that but if you are a higher rate taxpayer you could reclaim tax of 25p for every £1 donated, providing the gift aid claim is shown on your Tax Return, thus reducing your personal tax bill.

If you would like further advice on making charity payments personally or via your business, please contact our tax manager Janice Offer CTA at our offices.

Many of you may recall that in a newsletter about 18 months ago an apology was issued for being short-staffed at the time, which resulted in us struggling to turn around accounts jobs as quickly as we would have liked.

Since that time, we have recruited new staff and improved some of our key systems.  As a result, even though our client base has increased by 15% since the above mentioned apology was issued, we have reduced by 62% the average time that it was taking for records arriving in our office to be processed and finalised.

There is always still room for improvement in any system and we are committed to further improving this key performance indicator for our practice as time goes by.

If your year-end has now passed but you have not sent your records to us because you are struggling with any aspect of your accounting records, please do contact one of our client managers and help us to help you.

For the third year running Steve Backley is holding a Challenge the Olympians Golf Day on the 5th May.  If you are interested in bringing a team or to find out further details please contact Jenny@a4gsolutions.co.uk