You may have all seen in the news recently the petition to have the Prime Minister scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy, and you may wonder why on a blog for small business I bring it up, well quite simply put, if this government gets its way then this will be yet another tax that the small business will have to endure.

To add your voice to over 1.2 million others who are against it please use the link below and say NO!

Link to E-Petition on Downing Street website.

Tags: Small business, SME, Self Employed, Working for yourself, Road pricing policy, SMB, OMB

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.

Readers of Accounting Web may have seen Nichola Ross Martin’s article on the potential benefits of allowing small unincorporated businesses to prepare their accounts on the basis of cash received and spent.

At the moment this isn’t possible and all businesses have to use accruals accounting - prepayments, accruals, WIP, UITF40, the list goes on and on.  For small businesses who just want to tick along quietly and make enough to run the family home, that can be a real burden.

HMRC are looking into ways of cutting business red tape, and cash accounting is one possibility we might be able to encourage them to adopt.

Mike Truman at Taxation has now taken this up and is holding a poll so that business owners and accountants can vote on whether cash accounting would be a good idea.  Personally I think it would be an excellent idea.

May I encourage readers to go to www.taxation.co.uk and vote.

M

Tags: Accountants/CPAs, Business Development

My post today is one that is close to home, and also follows on from the theme of running a small business here in the UK.

This is a news item that has probably gone unnoticed by many, unless you happen to be one of the 26 staff members of Bowland Dairy.

Bowland Dairy is was a Lancashire based cheese maker that has fallen foul of an ongoing dispute between the European Commission and the Foods Standards Agency here in the UK.

The dispute surrounds the use of milk that showed signs of antibiotic residues.

I would like to think the UK Foods Standards Agency were right, and looking at previous problems with British beef and the European Commission you have to wonder who is in the right.

The sad thing about this, is, firstly here is an other UK small business gone to the wall with the loss of jobs for the 26 staff and the next thing is more evidence that the UK is not allowed to run it's own affairs, not only that, but it would now appear that according to a recent BBC news item the European Commission is to take legal action against the UK. Tony what is going on?

Emily recently posted about all the red tape that a small Limited company must comply with and how mind boggling it all is, then Philip commented about the recently introduced age discrimination rules which are also very easy to trip over.

Make no mistake, running a small business in the UK has become harder in the last 9 years with legislation and regulation, yet in spite of this, more and more people every year are leaving the comfort of that monthly or weekly pay cheque to set out on their own, yes a lot fail, but then again there are many successes also.

The dream of running your own business is still a strong pull for many, it was for me, and if you want to make the leap, then do so, don't be put off by all the mind boggling stuff that you have to deal with, just make sure you get a good team of advisers around you and let them worry about all that while you run your own business.

Tags: Business Development, Micro Business, Small Business, Self Employed, Business Start Up, Entrepreneur, Working for yourself, SME, OMB, Business Adviser, Holden Associates, WinWeb, Arena Rooms, Bowland Dairy, European Commission, UK Food Standards Agency

Phil Wainewright must have had a bad day. He asked in his post:

Who in the world can guarantee that they will never have to work offline?

And then goes on to explain, why SaaS - Software as a Service applications will NEVER replace desktop applications. I am not going into all the wrong assumptions and naive explanations of his post, but have a question for him:

Who in the world can guarantee that they will have their laptop or desktop computer with them all the time?

I hope Phil will have a better day tomorrow.

UPDATE: Dennis has written about this too, I like the title: ” Never is a long time”. I agree it’s kind of forever!

Tags: E-Commerce, IT, On-demand, SaaS, sme-blog, Software as a Service, Web Technology, WebOffice, WinWeb, WinWeb AccountsOffice , WinWeb CashBook, WinWeb OnlineOffice

I am very proud to announce a new contributor for my blog, Emily Coltman. Emily is a qualified accountant working for 5-director firm Cannon Moorcroft Ltd in High Wycombe, Bucks.

She qualified 3 years ago and since then has developed a strong interest in using accounts software to help small business clients keep their records with as little worry as possible.

As a result of talking to Jason Holden, she became interested in SaaS, trailed WinWeb and Cannon Moorcroft have now signed up to be Gold Partners themselves.

Emily is apparently delighted to receive my invitation to join this blog and looks forward to talking to lots more small businesses and users of WinWeb.

I am looking forward to her contributions and hope you will enjoy them as much as I will.

Tags: Accountants, Business Mentoring, Cannon-Moorcroft, Client Relations, Entrepreneur, Holden Associates, Selfemployed, Small Business, smb, sme, sme-blog, SOHO, Teleworking, Very Small Business, VSB, WinWeb, WinWeb AccountsOffice , WinWeb CashBook, WinWeb OnlineOffice

We all now know that from 1 October the National Minimum Wage ‘NMW’ is going up, so I thought I would share with you the top ten most commonly used reasons employers give for not paying the National Minimum Wage when caught by HM Revenue & Customs:

10. I only took him on as a favour
9. The workers can’t speak English
8. He’s over 65, so the national minimum wage doesn’t apply
7. She’s on benefits - if you add those to her pay, it totals the NMW
6. They can’t cope on their own and it’s more than they would get in their own country
5. He’s disabled
4. I didn’t think it applied to small employers
3. I didn’t think the workers were worth NMW
2. But she only wanted £3 an hour
1. He doesn’t deserve it - he’s a total waste of space

Tags: National Minimum Wage, Employing Staff, HM Revenue & Customs

Soon October will be upon us, and with it some important changes for those of you who employ staff.

I know recent postings have mentioned employing staff, well here are a few more things to be aware of from 1st October 2006:

• National minimum wage increases

• Changes in statutory maternity and adoption leave

• New age discrimination legislation comes into effect

• New fire safety regulations

• Changes in collective redundancy notification

Nobody said running your own business would be easy, less so when you are responsible for employing others.

Enjoy the rest of September and prepare to be fully compliant with all the changes from 1 October.

Tags: National Minimum wage, SMP, Statutory maternity pay, Adoption leave, Age discrimination legislation, Fire safety regulations, Employers, Employing staff