Monthly Archives: July 2021

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New EU VAT regulation – how accounting software can help

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By Alice Feilden on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

In the age of the pandemic, online shopping significantly increased. Businesses small and established alike took to e-commerce and shipping overseas, with the advent of social distancing and the closure of non-essential shops. But, the new EU VAT regulation could cause challenges for these businesses.

On 1st July, the European Union made changes to the way VAT is reported and paid. While the UK is no longer a member of the EU, the changes could impact businesses selling products and services online to customers.

The change to EU VAT reporting, which is designed to simplify tax reporting, increase online cross-border transactions and promote e-commerce, should help small businesses new and old operate in a post-Brexit, post-pandemic world.

What changes have been implemented?

Since 2015, the EU has been working to simplify VAT obligations for goods and service providers. In short, the EU made to ensure each country was benefitting from the correct taxes on goods arriving from elsewhere. The changes have been implemented in stages, with the 1st July introduction concluding the process.

One of the main changes to take note of is that for sales to consumers, VAT is

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Hot Business News Today

Small business owners face increased national insurance contributions

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By Timothy Adler on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

The government is pondering whether to increase national insurance contributions for both small business owners and employees to fund reform of social care.

The Treasury is debating whether to increase both employer and employee national insurance contributions by 1 percentage point – a penny in every pound both small business owners and their employees pay, according to the Times.

Employers currently pay 13.8 per cent as the main national insurance rate with employees paying 12 per cent of their earnings.

>See also: Government ‘should write off’ £1.7bn of Covid loan debt

Increasing national insurance contributions by 1 percentage point – for both employers and employees – would raise £10bn a year and would probably be dubbed a new “health and social care levy”.

Initially, it would be used to cut alarming NHS waiting lists for treatment, which are feared could rise from 5.3m to 13m patients.

It would then be spent to cap care costs, along the lines of a decade-old proposal to limit costs to £50,000, so families do not end up selling their homes and plug growing gaps in care treatment.

>See also: 20% of business workers self-isolating due to

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