Chartered Tax Advisers & Accountants
- +44 (0)1383 621118
- office@msactax.co.uk
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When I set out on the adventure that is working for myself, I went to a session organised by Business Gateway in which a representative of HMRC came along and told all the aspiring entrepreneurs (there were about six or seven of us I remember) about tax and what we should do to make sure we were on the right side of the law. All good, interesting stuff, but when it came to VAT he admitted he didn’t understand it, telling us words to the effect of “I’m not sure that even our VAT specialists do!” He was joking about that (I think): I’m sure HMRC’s VAT specialists do understand their subject, even if their ‘normal’ tax people don’t.
OK, let’s start with a confession and a declaration of interest. I’ve been using M&S for my accounts ever since I started out on path to the self-employment, well over five years ago. Prior to that, a career climbing the corporate ladder meant that I had regular contact with accountants – almost daily with a Management Accountant (whose job, as I described it, was to protect me from the results of my own stupidity), and very regularly with the CEO and CFO, both of whom were accountants and whose job consisted largely of grilling me and the rest of the board as to where the money was (in the recession it usually wasn’t). In other words, my knowledge of accounting was almost entirely centred around the monthly P&L, budgeting and trying to them work out how the company could make the numbers add up.
On the back of the proposed change to make a large swathe of businesses submit tax returns quarterly rather than annually as at present, one of our clients conducted a survey to investigate this further. M&S also circulated this survey via our mailing list and, while not statistically significant, the results were interesting, revealing that a lot of people didn’t know much about what was happening.
Last year’s M&S golf day at Canmore Golf Club was a rip-roaring success, generating lots of money for the two charities we supported in 2015 and, equally notably, featuring not just one but two holes-in-one. There was a lot to live up to in 2016…!