What is it?  The Marriage Allowance lets you transfer £1,150 of your Personal Allowance to your husband, wife or civil partner if they earn more than you,

This reduces their tax by up to £230 in the tax year.

To benefit as a couple, you (as the lower earner) must have an income of £11,500 or less.

You can backdate your claim to include any tax year since 5 April 2015 that you were eligible for Marriage Allowance.

Who can get it? This is the most important factor as only people with these specific circumstances will be able to apply:

• You’re married or in a civil partnership.
• One of you needs to be a non-taxpayer, which usually just means earning less than the £11,500 personal allowance.
• The other needs to be a basic 20% rate taxpayer (higher or additional-rate taxpayers aren’t eligible for this allowance). This means you’d normally need to earn less than £45,000.
• You both must have been born on or after 6 April 1935.  If not, you may be eligible for Married Couple’s Allowance.
• New. A rule that came into effect from Wednesday 29 November 2017 allows you to claim even if your partner has died since April 2015 and all the other criteria above apply.

It won’t affect your application for Marriage Allowance if you or your partner are currently receiving a pension or living abroad.

In most cases, the allowance will be given by adjusting the recipient partner’s personal tax code. The partner who transferred their personal allowance will also receive a new tax code, if employed. If the recipient partner is in self-assessment, it will reduce their self-assessment bill.

Already applied in the last tax year? You’ll automatically get the marriage tax allowance this year and only need to inform HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) if your circumstances have changed making you no longer eligible.

For further information on this or if you wish us to apply on your behalf, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01366 858538 or email info@jetaccountancy,co.uk.

 

The cost of an annual staff party is allowed as a deduction for tax purposes. However, the cost is only deductible if it relates to employees and their guests, which would include directors in the case of a company, but not sole traders and partners in the case of unincorporated organisations.

As a company director, you are entitled to provide an annual event for yourself, any staff you employ, and your partner, and reclaim the costs against the company, as long as the cost per head does not exceed £150 (including VAT).

The cost per head can include accommodation, transport, and food and drink – but must not exceed the £150 threshold.

You may decide to hold several events throughout the year, but the total claim for all events must not exceed this threshold.

To calculate the cost per head, HMRC states that you should ‘divide the total cost of each function by the total number of people (including non-employees) who attend in order to arrive at the cost per head.

Furthermore, an employer may provide employees with a seasonal gift, such as a turkey, bottle of wine or a box of chocolates at Christmas. All of these gifts are considered to be trivial and as such are not taxable.

One cautionary regarding VAT and staff gifts is that VAT is chargeable by the employer when an employee receives gifts totalling more than £50 in a year.

Every employer has automatic enrolment duties. They need to assess their staff, put them into a workplace pension scheme if they meet certain criteria, write to them to tell them what they have done, and complete and submit a declaration of compliance with The Pensions Regulator (TPR).

To date, more than 8 million people have been automatically enrolled in a workplace pension by more than 600,000 employers. And with hundreds of thousands more employers due to reach their duties start date by February 2018, the number of people automatically enrolled will continue to rise.

However, an employer’s workplace pension duties do not stop with declaring compliance. And with TPR conducting stop checks on employers across the country to make sure they are complying with their duties, it is important you are aware what needs to be done on a regular and ongoing basis to ensure you comply with the law.

What are your ongoing duties?

You will need to pay regular contributions into your chosen pension, monitor the age and earnings of your staff and enrol eligible staff, process any requests to join or leave the scheme, keep and maintain accurate records. You will also need to re-enrol eligible staff into an automatic enrolment pension scheme every three years.

We can take the whole burden of auto enrolment off your shoulders.  We offer a fixed fee Auto Enrolment Service as an add-on to our fixed fee Payroll Services.  We can take care of the setting up and the ongoing administrative burden, ensuring that your business complies with the new regulations.  Contact us on 01366 858538 for more information.

The launch of HMRC’s Making Tax Digital for Business programme has been pushed back until 2020. HMRC had planned to mandate the use of digital tax records for businesses by April 2018, but concerns were raised that the deadline did not provide enough time for businesses to prepare. As part of the changes, only businesses with a turnover above the VAT threshold will “have to keep digital records, and only for VAT purposes” from 2019, and businesses will not be asked to keep digital records for other taxes until “at least 2020”. The government also said that for small businesses, digital tax returns will be voluntary.

The Government’s “Making Tax Digital” policy has been dropped from the Finance Bill after opposition from taxpayers, business groups and senior political figures across all parties. The initiative would have forced millions of businesses and self-employed people to file multiple tax returns each year. Anita Monteith, tax manager at ICAEW, said: “This is a sensible decision by government. Making Tax Digital plans remain controversial and need more scrutiny by those who will be affected, and most importantly proper parliamentary debate – a clear roadmap as to how MTD will work in practice is needed”. The system was due to be rolled out next April and pilot schemes were already under way. Mike Cherry of the FSB said the next government will be asked to rethink the plans carefully following the election while Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of tax at the ACCA, said the delay would provide space for a proper debate. A spokesman for Phillip Hammond would not confirm that the plans would be reintroduced once the election was over. A tax on dividend incomes and new rules for non-doms were also removed from the Bill, leading to accusations that the Conservatives were breaking their promise to crack down on tax avoidance.

Here are the key points at a glance:

 

• Personal tax-free allowance to rise as planned to £11,500 this year and to £12,500 by 2020.

 

• Tax-Free Childcare will soon be available to working parents.  It will provide up to £2,000 a year in childcare support for each child under 12.  Parents will be able to receive up to £4,000 for disabled children up to the age of 17.  Parents of younger children will be able to apply for the scheme first, with all eligible parents able to access the scheme by the end of the year.  Working parents in England will also be able to apply for an additional 15 hours of free childcare for three and four year olds, bringing the total to 30 hours a week.

 

• The Lifetime ISA will be available from 6 April this year.  The Lifetime ISA will allow younger adults to save up to £4,000 each year and receive a bonus of up to £1,000 a year on these contributions. Funds can be withdrawn tax-free to put towards a first home or saved until a person turns 60.

 

• Small Businesses and landlords under the VAT threshold will have an extra year to prepare for Making Tax Digital (MTD).  Unincorporated businesses (businesses owned privately by one or more people) that have an annual turnover below the VAT registration threshold will have until April 2019 to prepare before MTD becomes mandatory.  Under MTD, businesses will use digital software to keep tax records and update HMRC quarterly.

 

• The main rate of National Insurance Contributions (NICs) for the self-employed will increase.  Currently, the self-employed may have to pay both Class 4 and Class 2 NICs:  Class 4 NICs at 9% are paid on profits between £8,060 and £43,000.  Class 2 NICs are paid on profits of £5,965 or more.  From 2018, Class 2 NICs will be abolished. Class 4 NICs will rise to 10% in April 2018 and to 11% in April 2019.  Taken together, only a self-employed person with profits over £16,250 will have to pay more as a result of these changes.  This change reflects the fact that the differences in contributory benefit entitlement between the self-employed and employees are now small, following the introduction of the new State Pension in April 2016.  In the summer, the government will also consider whether there is a case for greater consistency in parental benefits between the employed and self-employed.

 

• Tax-free dividend allowance will be reduced from £5,000 to £2,000 from April 2018.  This will reduce the tax difference between the self-employed and those working through a company. Typically, general investors will need over £50,000 worth of stocks and shares outside an ISA to be affected.

Here are the key points at a glance:

• Income tax threshold to be raised to £11,500 in April 2017
• Higher rate income tax threshold to be increased to £45,000 from April 2017
• Removal of tax and NI benefits of salary sacrifice schemes with the exception of ultra-low emission cars, pensions, childcare vouchers and cycle to work
• National Living Wage for employees over the age of 25 to rise from £7.20 an hour to £7.50 from April next year
• Annual ISA allowance to be increased to £20,000 for 2017/18
• Employee and employer National Insurance thresholds to be equalised at £157 per week from April 2017
• Insurance premium tax to rise from 10% to 12% next June
• Introduction of a new investment bond
• From April 2018 termination payments in excess of £30,000 will also be subject to national insurance
• Commitment to cut corporation tax rate to 17% by 2020
• Reform of trade loss relief

A few of our clients will receive a letter through the post shortly to remind them the deadline for submitting their self assessment tax return online is 31 January 2017.

Please let us have your accounting records before 31 December so we can ensure your return is filed before the deadline.

Any returns submitted after this date incur an automatic £100 penalty from HMRC, an additional 5% of tax due is added after 30 days and if your return is still not submitted after 3 months, you will be charged further penalties of £10 a day.

Thank you!

National minimum wage (NMW) rates will increase on 1 October by between 3% and 4.7% for workers under the age of 25 and apprentices, and employers need to make sure the new rates are implemented for all hours worked from that date.

 

NMW: age/status	Current rate	New rate from October 2016
21 to 24	£6.70	£6.95
18 to 20	£5.30	£5.55
16 to 17	£3.87	£4.00
Apprentices	£3.30	£3.40

From April 2016 the Dividend Tax Credit will be replaced by a new tax-free Dividend Allowance.

The Dividend Allowance means that you won’t have to pay tax on the first £5,000 of your dividend income, no matter what non-dividend income you have.

The allowance is available to anyone who has dividend income.

Headline rates of dividend tax are also changing.

You’ll pay tax on any dividends you receive over £5,000 at the following rates:

• 7.5% on dividend income within the basic rate band
• 32.5% on dividend income within the higher rate band
• 38.1% on dividend income within the additional rate band

This simpler system will mean that only those with significant dividend income will pay more tax.

If you’re an investor with modest income from shares, you’ll see either a tax cut or no change in the amount of tax you owe.

Dividends received by pension funds that are currently exempt from tax, and dividends received on shares held in an Individual Savings Account (ISA), will continue to be tax free.

From April 2016 you have to apply the new headline rates on the amount of dividends you actually receive, where the income is over £5,000 (excluding any dividend income paid within an ISA).

The Dividend Allowance will not reduce your total income for tax purposes. However, it will mean that you don’t have any tax to pay on the first £5,000 of dividend income you receive.

Dividends within your allowance will still count towards your basic or higher rate bands, and may therefore affect the rate of tax that you pay on dividends you receive in excess of the £5,000 allowance.