Monthly Archives: April 2020

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Small business minister trying to help owner-directors hit by coronavirus

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Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Small business minister Paul Scully is trying to help the 1.6m owner-directors shut out of coronavirus government business support schemes.
Although Treasury has said that owner-directors of small businesses could furlough themselves through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, as a company director you can only pay yourself up to £800 through PAYE – which means you have to take the balance of salary as dividends.
For somebody earning £800 per month through PAYE, this would equate to a monthly income of £640.
Mr Scully, speaking during a webinar hosted by accountancy software firm Intuit on Wednesday, he wanted to get money “asap” to owner-directors who “are falling between the cracks” of government coronavirus schemes.
However, the problem is, according to Mr Scully, that the tax system doesn’t differentiate between dividends as part of pay and dividends earned as passive investment income from shares.
There is also a public perception issue as government would not want to be seen to be rewarding company directors who already pay less tax than those paying in through PAYE. Basic tax on dividends is 7.5 per cent; the basic income tax rate is 20 per cent on top of national insurance contributions.
Wants to

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Ebury launches £40m small business coronavirus lending package

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Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
Ebury, one of the largest fintech companies in Europe, has launched a £40m funding package for UK and European small businesses.
The Santander-backed firm has raised the initial £40m help SMEs manage their working capital during the coronavirus crisis. Ebury is hoping to expand this programme into the hundreds of millions in collaboration with governments in the UK and Europe.
This initiative is geared towards SMEs who cannot access the government’s controversial Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS).
>See also: How do I apply for a Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan?
At the moment the firm is approaching government bodies so that it can distribute financial packages in the coming months. The firm is in talks with the British Business Bank to become an accredited CBILS lender, according to Sky News.
Juan Lobato, co-founder of Ebury, said: “Getting finance to UK companies is essential in helping manage the cash flow pressures they are currently experiencing and Ebury is delighted to be offering this financing initiative. Ebury was founded to fill a gap left by the 2008 financial crisis and in this latest crisis it is ideally placed to help the government’s distribution of its financial aid packages to large

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