More than one million Australians generate their income from running a business from home - and the number is steadily growing. While this is a small number for European or US markets, in Australia it represents two-thirds of all small business.

In recent discussions with Australia’s Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, they admitted that they know very little about the needs and activities of home based businesses. Among he questions they ask are:

• Why do people start home based business?
• What impacts on their ability to grow or remain in business?
• Are home based businesses viable away from home?
• Which industries have home based business components?
• What skill level do home based business entrepreneurs have?

The question I asked why they don’t ask the small accountants all these questions about home based business. The accountants service most of them. They had not thought about that at all? Why not? Why are the accountants being ignored?

The number of home-based businesses is going to grow, accountants are a vital part of the success equation of this trend. I feel accountants have to be more proactive in letting small business know, that they are more then the people who work out the tax for small business. Just saying it is not enough!

Tags: Accountants, Australia, Business Development, Business Infrastructure, Business Start Up, Client Relations, Entrepreneur, Home Business, Homesourcing, Micro Business, Outsourcing, SaaS, SBI, Selfemployed, Small Business, Small Business Infrastructure, smb, sme, sme-blog, SOHO, WinWeb

According to recent reports tax inspectors are being offered financial incentives, of up to £2,000, to encourage them to collect more tax.

According to a recent article in the Timesonline, tax compliance teams throughout the country have been told to increase the amount of tax that they recover, by one quarter in 2007.

The fear with this results related bonus system approach by HMRC is that this will lead to more investigations, which in turn may lead to unreasonable and protracted enquiries from inspectors under pressure to perform.

Yes, everyone should pay the right amount of tax, of that there can be no doubt, but, is this really the way to ‘build a strong economy’, one of Gordon Browns aims when he delivered his pre-budget report at the later end of 2006.

Tags: HMRC, Taxation, Self Employed, Self Assessment Tax

Here's a new piece of regulation that will have passed most small business owners by.

Having come in on the 1st January 2007, The E-commerce Regulations applies to limited companies with websites and those that use e-mail as a means of communications.

The regulations say that every company now has to list its vat registration number, company registration number, place of registration and registered office address in legible characters on its website. This information must also appear in e-mails and online order forms.

For those who want to read the regulation for themselves please click here.

New Year, new more regulation!

Tags: Small Business, SMB, OMB, Micro Business, Self Employed, Limited Company, Working for yourself, Regulation

Happy New Year to everyone, and wishing you all a very Prosperous 2007 from all at The Small Business Blog.
Due to work/client commitments we at The Small Business Blog may have been quiet over the last month or so but we will be bringing you plenty of fresh views and ideas to help the small business over the coming year.