Monthly Archives: October 2020

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1m self-employed face having to pay tax bill larger than what they earnt

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Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
One million of the UK’s 4.5m self-employed face having to prepay tax bills higher than what they actually earned this year.
Many freelancers pay self-assessment tax bills on account twice a year, with the first prepayment falling due this January.
This is despite the Covid pandemic decimating many self-employed profits since March.
>See also: MPs to fight Sunak over move to hike national insurance for self-employed
The problem is that prepayments are based on the previous year’s profits, in this case what the self-employed earned in 2019-20 – before the pandemic hit.
TaxScouts, an online self-assessment tax service provider, estimated 1m people could be hit with an inflated tax bill because payment on account is based on the previous year’s earnings.
“While this is well and good in normal times, it doesn’t take into consideration the huge loss of earnings that so many of the self employed will have faced during the pandemic,” said TaxScouts.
However, anticipating the problem, HMRC has allowed the self-employed to defer payment on account and to request a reduction in their tax bill if they are facing financial difficulty and know their earnings will be down.
>See also: MPs urge Government to do more to help

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Do I need to pay employee for travelling time?

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Originally written by Amy Paxton on Small Business
Your employee is confusing travelling time during work with travelling time to and from work. There is no right to be paid for time spent travelling to and from work unless this is specifically set out within the contract. The only time you would normally look at making a payment or some contribution towards travel to and from work is if you require your employee to work at a different location from usual.
The obligation on an employer is to pay an employee in respect of their actions in carrying out their work. This doesn’t include covering the costs of getting to and from work unless you have specifically agreed to do so. Any travelling you require for work, such as visiting a customer within the employee’s working hours, is time spent carrying out work under the contract and so counts towards the time the employee should be paid for but the time spent getting to work and back is his choice and responsibility, not yours. Ensuring that time spent travelling is counted towards working hours is particularly important if the employee is paid at, or very near, to the national minimum wage rate

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What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Phil Daneshyar, Kanda

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Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Electrician Richard Fleeman had a problem. As an electrical contractor, a client he’d completed work for had gone bankrupt, leaving him £20,000 out of pocket. Was there a way, he wondered, for tradespeople such as himself to make sure they got paid once the work was done. He talked it over with his cousin, Rob Gallagher, who happened to be studying astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. The pair came up with a digital platform which would be an escrow account for tradespeople using cryptocurrency; the money would be released once the job was completed.
Richard and Rob brought in their friend Phil Daneshyar, who’d already had experience as an entrepreneur, going on Dragon’s Den in 2017 – the year he left the University of York – to pitch a device which monitored your water consumption. Although the dragons held on to their cash, California-based 11 Health licensed the technology to monitor how dehydrated chronically ill patients were.
The trio launched the website Tradesmart last December and, later that month, won £150,000 worth of investment from The Start-Up Series Fund through Worth Capital.
>See also: What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Scott

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Hot Business News Today

1m self-employed face having to pay tax bill larger than what they earnt

by  •  • 0 Comments

Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
One million of the UK’s 4.5m self-employed face having to prepay tax bills higher than what they actually earned this year.
Many freelancers pay self-assessment tax bills on account twice a year, with the first prepayment falling due this January.
This is despite the Covid pandemic decimating many self-employed profits since March.
>See also: MPs to fight Sunak over move to hike national insurance for self-employed
The problem is that prepayments are based on the previous year’s profits, in this case what the self-employed earned in 2019-20 – before the pandemic hit.
TaxScouts, an online self-assessment tax service provider, estimated 1m people could be hit with an inflated tax bill because payment on account is based on the previous year’s earnings.
“While this is well and good in normal times, it doesn’t take into consideration the huge loss of earnings that so many of the self employed will have faced during the pandemic,” said TaxScouts.
However, anticipating the problem, HMRC has allowed the self-employed to defer payment on account and to request a reduction in their tax bill if they are facing financial difficulty and know their earnings will be down.
>See also: MPs urge Government to do more to help

Read more...