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Collection of Direct Earning Attachment Orders (DEAs) Issued by Department of Work and Pension (DWP) Suspended?

We have been made aware that some employees have been contacted by DWP and have been told to suspend all DEAs processed via their payroll that have been issued by them. Upon investigation, DWP have, in fact, issued a statement on their debt management telephone line, advising that all debt management collection in relation to overpayments of benefits, tax credits and social funds have been suspended for a temporary period. They will not be issuing any new collection notices nor collecting any de...

Bucks Business First Grants for Businesses in Buckinghamshire

Funds has been made available to support businesses in Buckinghamshire through a partnership between Buckinghamshire Local Enterprise Partnership, Buckinghamshire Business First and Buckinghamshire Council. Grants of up to £5,000 To support businesses to invest in professional services which will provide essential support and identify opportunities to increase business resilience. Grants of up to £10,000 To support businesses who do not qualify for government support or to provide the differen...

Is There Help for Small, Limited Company Directors from the Government's Coronavirus Support?

We are living through an unprecedented time, where a virus caught thousands of miles away has turned life as we know on its head, disrupting every part of our ‘normal’ life, both personal and professional. It is difficult to understand, to come to terms with. The Government have put a lot of support in place for businesses and employees to try and protect jobs and the economy but there are pockets of individuals that have been left on their own. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme has been...

COVID-19: Payroll; Employees and HMRC: Interesting Things We Have Learnt This Week (W/C 31st March, 2020)

We have been busy attending webinars and reading up on the new and changing guidelines with relation to small businesses and self-employed individuals this week. We thought it would be helpful to note some of the items we have found interesting (as a small business ourselves):If you are applying for a grant made available because of COVID-19 we recommend that you download the corresponding guidance from the Government website. The guidelines are constantly changing so this gives proof that what ...

HMRC Announces Intentions to Stop Automatically Sending Self-Assessment Returns

HMRC announced on 16th March 2020 that they will no longer automatically send paper returns to encourage customers to use the online service to cut the unnecessary use of paper to be more environmentally friendly.  Last year, 94% of HMRC’s customers filed their returns online and HMRC recently saw a 110% increase in customers registering to communicate digitally. Last year HMRC automatically sent out more than 500,000 returns. From April, taxpayers who have filed on paper in the past will...

New Self-Employed Financial Support Announced By The Government

The Chancellor announced support for self-employed individuals yesterday evening (26th March) confirming what we already knew, self-employed people are a crucial part of the UK’s workforce. This covers 95% of people who receive the majority of their income from self-employment. The Chancellor states “this gives the self-employed the same level of support as those in work.” What does it mean to you? direct cash grant of 80% of their profits, up to £2,500 per monthlatest announcement in an ...

Employer Support for Covid-19 - What is a Furloughed Worker?

If an employer can’t cover staff costs due to COVID-19, they may be able to access support to continue paying part an employees wage to avoid redundancies through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. An employer must classify an employee as a furloughed worker which means that the employee is kept on the employer’s payroll, rather than being laid off. To qualify for this scheme, the employee can’t undertake any work for them while they are furloughed. This will allow the employe...

How To Make Homeworking Work For Businesses

Communication Ensure staff understand communication is fundamental to any organisation but more so when working from home. There are lots of web conferencing and collaboration options: Microsoft Teams, we use MS Teams, it is free with some Microsoft subscriptions (you would need to check which subscription you have) but it offers great functions such as multiple person online meetings (from in and outside your organisation), which are recorded and can be shared and accessed by absent staff, scre...

Coronavirus: Tax Implications of Working from Home

For many, a period of enforced working from home is now inevitable as we fight the Coronavirus, it won’t be everyone’s first consideration but there are tax implications in doing so. Employees Most employees should be able to claim tax relief for some of the bills they have to pay because they must work at home on a regular basis at the request of their employer. These include things like a portion of lighting and heating costs, business-related telephone calls and so on. However, it is...

An Update From Cashtrak on COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

Cashtrak are taking precautionary measures and we are making a conscious effort to work remotely where possible. All of our staff perform their roles from home regularly as well as the office so working from home will have no impact to our business. All of our software including our phone system facilitate remote working, therefore we will continue to work as normal. Any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us....

Cashtrak Look At The Budget Update March, 2020 For Individuals, Sole Traders and Small Businesses

Chancellor Rishi Sunak had a difficult task giving his first Budget at a time of such a challenging economic background, which was made worse by the impact of the Coronavirus. The government needed to fulfil its election promises, so the emphasis was on spending plans as they sought to fulfil the promises, to substantially increase infrastructure expenditure and to recover from the negative impact of the Coronavirus. These announcements were supported by the Bank of England, with the cut in the ...

HMRC Reveals The Bizarre and Weird Excuses for Late Self-assessment Tax Returns and Expense Claims Over the Last Decade

With the tax return deadline a week away, we thought we’d share some of the more imaginative excuses and expense claims HMRC have received over the last decade. I was up a mountain in Wales, and couldn’t find a post box or get an internet signalMy dog ate the post … againClaiming £4.50 for sausage and chips meal expenses for 250 daysMy hamster ate my postI’ve been cruising round the world in my yacht, and only picking up post when I’m on dry landPet food for a Shih Tzu ‘guard d...

Employment Related Tax Relief - Can You Claim Tax Relief on Personal Equipment Used for Business Purposes?

January is a very busy month for us, the tax return deadline is looming, we have last minute tax returns to turn around as well as our usual VAT returns, payroll and all other bookkeeping in between!  We’re looking forward the weekend! With tax on our minds, we would like to share some interesting points that our clients have found really useful about claiming tax relief on using personal equipment for business. You can claim a tax deduction for the business use proportion of the cost whe...

HMRC Has Issued A Warning To Self-Assessment Tax Return Clients In The Run Up To 31st January Deadline

HMRC has issued a warning to tax return clients to be aware of fraudsters ahead of the 31st January tax return deadline. Over the last year HMRC received almost 900,000 reports about suspicious HMRC contact, more than 100,000 were phone scams whilst over 620,000 were about bogus tax rebates so if you are required to submit a tax return, be alert. Some of the ways the fraudsters tried to fool people were: Offering a fax tax refundPretending to be HMRC texting or e mailing a link which goes to a f...

Cashtrak Is Proud To Announce Our New Charity Of The Year For 2019/ 20!

Here at Cashtrak, we enjoy giving something back, we support our local community and support a charity for the year. Each December our staff nominate one charity each and one is picked at random to become Cashtrak’s charity of the year. We don’t send corporate Christmas cards, instead donating what we would have paid for cards and stamps for clients and suppliers to our charity of the year. We also support fundraising events and organise our own where possible. We are proud to announce that ...

Taxpayer Is Fined By HMRC For Submitting a Tax Return Using Employers P60 - How Using A Tax Advisor Can Save Money

With the tax return deadline drawing close we read with interest a report by accountingWeb on an employee who was fined by HMRC for submitting his tax return using his P60 which was issued by his employer, it was found that the employer had made an error on the P60. The tribunal found that the error in his P60 was the fault of his employer, the mistake meant that earnings between April and August were not included on his P60, he used the figures on this P60 for his tax return. The tribunal looke...

Xero Bank Feeds Are Changing......

Xero users will be affected by the new EU requirements for the banking industry that come in to effect on 14th September, 2019. Designed to give you more control of your banking data and how it’s used. Whilst this is welcomed it means the way that Xero retrieves the information from your bank has to change and you need to update Xero, this will ensure your transactions can continue to flow into Xero each day. We have more information on our website, click here for open banking help.N...

Cashtrak Are Pleased to Announce That We Have A New Member of Staff

We are pleased to welcome Caroline to our growing team. Caroline is an experienced bookkeeper with a demonstrated history of working in the accounting industry. Caroline is also skilled in sales, management, account management, Microsoft Excel, and invoicing. She's a strong accounting professional accredited by the ICB. Caroline brings a wealth of bookkeeping experience and a passion for payroll! She will be managing our payroll portfolio and some ad hoc clients along the way. All of u...

31st July Self Assessment Tax Return Deadline

If you're self-employed and pay your tax through payment on account, 31 July marks the deadline for your second payment. The amount you have to pay is based on your earnings for 2017-18. You must submit your tax return as you did in January.  'Payments on account’ are advance payments towards your tax bill (including Class 4 National Insurance if you’re self-employed). You have to make 2 payments on account every year unless: Your last Self Assessment tax bill was less than £1,000...

We are Recruiting! Two Bookkeepers Needed

Successful, multi-award winning, friendly bookkeeping practice require 2 superstar bookkeepers! Due to continued growth we need 1 part time bookkeeper and 1 full time bookkeeper. These are ideal positions for recently qualified bookkeepers with no desire for running their own practice however applications from experienced bookkeepers would be welcomed. This is a home-based role with regular office attendance required (training period will be mostly office based.) Should be located within 25 mile...

Self Assessment Tax Return - Why Submit to HMRC Early?

It may be a surprise to learn that we have already written to our self-assessment tax return clients asking them to start thinking about their submissions and sending their paperwork to us as soon as possible and we have started to submit some of our early birds tax returns! So, why are we doing this so early? The tax return deadline isn't until 31st January. Well: Historically, deadline day is the busiest single day for filing. There were more than 11.5 million taxpayers required to file their ...

Cashktrak are Collaborating with Eight Wealth Management and Xero to Host an Informative Seminar on MTD

We are delighted to announce that Cashtrak, Eight Wealth Management and Xero are joining forces to present an informative seminar on the recent changes relating to MTD (Making Tax Digital.) All three companies have had a lot of questions from clients about MTD so we believe this seminar will provide an invaluable insight in to MTD. The invitation is open to everyone. We will cover: What is MTD? Why it is important to your business? How to prepare your business for MTD with accounting software Th...

Re-Enrolment - What an Employer Needs to Know About Employee Pensions

As part of auto enrolment legislation, you have a duty to assess and re-enrol eligible employees into your workplace pension scheme every three years. Once you’ve carried out re-enrolment for the first time, your next re-enrolment window will be calculated from your previous re-enrolment date. Since you started your pension scheme, some of your employees may have left, stopped paying pension contributions, or chosen to pay less than the minimum automatic enrolment contributions. In any case wh...

We Love to Hear Fantastic Feedback from Clients

Cashtrak provide a bespoke bookkeeping service that we tailor to our client's needs. We work hard to provide a wide range of services from self-assessment tax returns to VAT returns ensuring that they are cost effective, check out our website for more information on our services: www.cashtrak.co.uk/page/services. We strive at Cashtrak for customer satisfaction so we are always grateful for positive feedback from our clients.  Karen Kimberley at The Engagement Ring www.theenga...

Workplace Pensions Minimum Contributions Increase

The minimum contributions for your automatic enrolment workplace pension scheme will increase from 6 April 2019 (also known as phasing.) Whilst a lot of payroll providers have software that will automatically manage this, it is the employers responsibility to make sure these increases are implemented. If you don’t have any staff in a pension scheme for automatic enrolment, or if you are already paying above the increased minimum amounts then you don’t need to&nb...