Every business with property should during October 2009 have received their new business rates valuation. This valuation will form the basis of business rates for the next five years.

It is very important to check the detail of the new valuation to make sure that the rateable value applied to your property is correct. The rateable value is determined by a number of factors primarily the open market rental value on the valuation date. The valuation date for the 2010 changes is 1 April 2008. We are aware of cases where business rates have been reduced, following appeals on the basis that rental values have fallen.

Appeals against the new valuations should be submitted before the 30 November 2009. If you want to appeal your business rates, please feel free to phone for advice.

Business clients should also be aware that there are a number of specific reliefs that you may be able to claim to reduce your business rates – these include small business rate relief (England and Wales) and transitional relief. This isnt given automatically, so you must complete the form and claim it.

If you would like our assistance checking the valuation please call. The Valuation Office Agency (VOA) website can be accessed at www.2010.voa.gov.uk/rli/en/basic and has a number of useful FAQ sections.

We all know the property market has been through terrible times lately. Some businesses, set up in the good times to invest in let property for the long term, have been forced to sell some property to generate  funds to cover ongoing costs.

Where a property investment business starts to develop properties for sale, rather than keeping them for long term letting, the business has started a trade of property development.

So a property, previously held as an investment, is transferred to “stock” , meaning it is now stock being made ready to be sold, then that property must be treated as if it had been sold at its open market value at that point.

This can create a capital gains tax charge, or a capital loss, before the property has actually been sold.

To avoid this problem the business owners can make an election to treat the value of the property when it enters stock, as the value when it was acquired by the business. Any gain or loss will then only arise when the property is eventually sold by the business. This election must be sent to the tax office within two years of the end of the accounts year for a company, or by the first anniversary of 31 January following the tax year end for an unincorporated business.

Besides the timing issue, the advantage of making this election is that the loss, if one arises, becomes a trading loss made on the sale of stock by the business rather than a capital loss. Generally a trading loss can be set-off against a wider range of income than a capital loss. However, to use this trading loss the Taxman will have to be convinced that the property business has actually started a trade of property development, and is not simply selling off its surplus investments.

This can be a very difficult area and full advice is essential so please contact us for advice in your own circumstances.

If you are employed

It is well established through legal cases that employees cannot claim the cost of travel between home and their normal place of work. H M Revenue & Customs consider this cost merely puts the employee in a position to perform their duties. The definition of employee in the examples that follow includes salaried directors of private limited companies.

However, there are a number of important exceptions to this general principle, that home to work travel costs cannot be claimed:-

• Travel costs from home to a temporary workplace can be claimed – a temporary workplace can be a place of continuous work for up to 24 months, if this period is likely to be exceeded from the start, then the workplace would be considered permanent from the start and no relief would be due. (Note: If it isn’t known that the contract will exceed 24 months, then relief will be due up to the 24 month point, or up to the point when it is known that the 24 months will be exceeded if earlier.) A temporary workplace is one where less than 40% of working time is spent; if this is the case, the 24 month rule doesn’t apply and relief will be available in full.
• Travel between two places of work required by the same employer.
• Travel to attend an appointment required by an employer. This cost is allowed even if the journey starts at home.
• Travel between home and work where home is a workplace and the location of home is dictated by the requirements of the job.

If you are self-employed

Many self-employed business people have set up their businesses to run from their home address. If you are self-employed you can claim for any travel expense which is required by your trade as long as the business element can be separated from any private element. For instance you may use your car for a trip into town to bank your business cheques and call at the supermarket on the way home.

To meet the HM Revenue & Custom’s requirement of reasonable care in apportioning such costs, you must keep appropriate records. For car users this would normally be a written log of business miles and a record of the vehicles recorded mileage at the beginning and end of each trading year. In this way an accurate assessment of average business use can be calculated and applied to total running costs.

And don’t forget, if you run your business through a limited company you are not self-employed. The comments in the first section of this article would apply to your business.

There has been a lot of publicity lately about the tax advantages of running cars with low CO2 ratings. There are a number of benefits:

• possible 100% first year tax deduction for the cost of the vehicle,

• much reduced benefit in kind charges,

• lower road fund tax and so on.

But not all of us want to run such vehicles even if there are tax, VAT and running cost advantages.

Double cab pickups, sometimes described as crew cab pickups, are an anomaly!

For business users, especially the self

-employed, they present an unusual tax opportunity.

The HMRC web site describes double cab pickups as:

“… a front passenger cab that contains a second row of seats and is capable of seating about 4 passengers, plus the driver with four doors capable of being opened independently (two door versions are normally accepted to be vans, even those with rear doors that can only be opened after the front doors and that must be closed before the front doors) and an uncovered pick-up area behind the passenger cab.”

From the tax year 2002 -03 onwards a double cab pickup is classified as a van for both VAT and benefits purposes if it has a payload of 1 tonne (1,000kg) or more.

If your double cab pickup meets this definition:

You can reclaim any VAT added to the purchase price, and

The net capital cost (after VAT has been reclaimed) could be available for a 100% first year tax allowance as part of your Annual Investment Allowance up to a maximum of £50,000 each tax year.

If you are a director or employee, any significant private use of the double cab pickup will trigger a standard benefit in kind charge of tax on £3,000 per year. In addition if your firm/employer provides fuel to cover private use of the vehicle there will be an extra benefit charge of tax on £500 per year at current rates. The best way to minimise any risk of these benefits being applied is to restrict the use of the pickup to business use only, or make sure that any private use meets the HMRC definition of “insignificant private use”.

If you would like more information regarding this article, or any advice regarding tax effective strategies for running your business vehicles please call.

As a measure to help businesses during the recession, the Finance Bill 2009 allows trading losses for businesses to be carried back up to a maximum of three years. To qualify the losses must be suffered:

For limited companies, during trading periods ending in the two year period to 23 November 2010, and
For unincorporated, self-assessed businesses, during the tax years 2008 -09 and 2009 -10.
Losses have to be carried back to the latest year first. For example if the loss is incurred in the year to 31 March 2010 the first carry back is to the year ending 31 March 2009 (there is no restriction on the amount of losses carried back to this year). If losses are still available after this first set off they can be carried back a further two years. (In our example to the year ending 31 March 2008 and then the year ending 31 March 2007).

However the carry back to these further two years is capped at £50,000 per year against total profits for companies. For unincorporated businesses the carry back to the two earlier years is also capped at £50,000 per year but only against profits from the same trade.

If the loss carried back reduces taxable profits in any of the earlier years tax refunds should be forthcoming.

Take note of the following factors:

Tax losses can be enhanced by claims for equipment purchases, and
Self-employed tax payers can lose the benefit of their individual (personal) tax allowances and this needs taking into account when making loss relief claims.

The rules on capital allowances have been changed and are now generous towards most small businesses. If you are thinking of investing in assets that qualify for the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) during 2009-10 it is worth bearing in mind the additional relief you can claim to take advantage of the 40% First Year Allowance (FYA) that is available for one year to 5 April 2010 (1 April 2010 if you trade as a company.)

For most businesses the only assets that do not qualify for the AIA or the FYA are motor cars. Although don’t forget that if you buy a car with CO2 emissions under 110g/km a special 100% allowance can be claimed.

The AIA allows you to write off 100% of qualifying expenditure during 2009-10 up to a total spend of £50,000.

But what happens if you spend more than £50,000? Let’s say you invested £80,000 during 2009-10 in assets that qualify for the AIA and FYA. You would be eligible to claim the maximum £50,000 AIA and a 40% FYA on the excess. This would make your potential, combined claim £62,000, or an overall 78% tax write down in one year.

Even if the claims created net tax losses in 2009-10 this may enable your business to recover some of the tax paid in the previous three years.

Please call if you need more information on this topic, particularly, does your intended investment in new equipment qualify for these reliefs?

HMRC have indicated that they are considering reclassifying self-employed construction workers as employed. They have actually launched a consultation process with interested parties. Reclassified workers would be taxed through the PAYE system regardl

ess of the length or brevity of each employment assignment.

HMRC are convinced that a significant number of construction workers are taxed as if self-employed even though they are providing their ser

vices to contractors effectively as if they were employees.

HMRC are calling this status issue “false self-employment”. HM

RC plan to introduce legislation to protect income tax and national insurance revenue that they feel is being lost.

The consultation document that HMRC have published assumes that these changes will happen and simply seeks input as to how such changes should be introduced.

Comments on this proposal have to be sent to HMRC before the 12 October 2009; so change, if it is coming, may not be that far away!

Our Government and that of the USA are serious about clamping down on the use of overseas tax havens to avoid tax, the latest development involves the Cayman Islands.

Now, it is a little known fact that Graham Davies applied for a job in the Cayman Islands shortly after qualifying as a Chartered Accountant! The job was managing a portfolio of ‘captive’ insurance companies. These allow wealthy companies to pay insurance premiums to their own off shore insurer. This is legal, although HMRC are anxious to see that the premiums are at a ‘market’ rate. (No I didnt get it, if I had, you wouldnt be reading this!)

A new Double Taxation Arrangement (DTA) between the UK and the Cayman Islands was recently signed in London.

The new DTA has been drafted to allow for the avoidance of double taxation and for the exchange of information necessary to prevent fraud. The arrangement will apply to taxpayers who are resident in either the UK, Cayman Islands or both jurisdictions. In the UK the agreement will apply to income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax (in relation to the exchange of information), inheritance tax and VAT.

The exchange of information provisions meet the OECD standards and it is expected this new DTA will help combat tax avoidance and money laundering involving both countries.

The DTA will take effect once both countries have finalised the legislative procedures needed to give the arrangement the force of law in both countries.

Related articles

• Cayman Islands hits back at Brown over tax haven attacks (telegraph.co.uk)
• Cayman Islands Extends Tax Information Assistance to 20 Countries, Including Major OECD Trading Partners (newswire.ca)
• OECD removes tax havens from list (news.bbc.co.uk)

We have all seen and heard comments in  the  media  about  MPs “flipping” their properties in order to avoid capital gains tax on selling their  second  homes.

You might be wondering what does this mean? And is this a game  anyone  with  more  than  one “residence”  can  play? …read on

The hysteria has surrounded the facts that

• MP’s have been able to purchase a second property with a mortgage of up to £300,000 funded by the taxpayer, then ‘flip’ to avoid or minimise the capital gains tax payable.
• Some MP’s have nominated one property as their second home for House of Commons expenses purposes, and a different home as the second home for CGT purposes.

Lets start with some basic rules

• You are exempt from CGT on a gain from selling your  ”main  residence”,  and you  can  only  have  one  main  residence  at  the same time.

• If you are married or in a civil partnership, you can only have one main residencebetween the two of you.

• The one  exception  to  this  rule  is when a property has been your main residence at any time during your ownership of it, in which case exemption extends to the last 36 months before you sell it, even if in fact you have another main residence during that period.

The purpose of this exception is to make some allowance for the fact that you may need to buy a new home before you manage to sell the old one. Certainly a consideration in todays marketplace.

When you have more than one “residence”, the law allows you to nominate which one is to be treated as your “main residence” for tax purposes and so enjoy the exemption from CGT. You must do this within two years of having a choice, ie more than one residence.

Once you have made this nomination, by writing to the tax office that deals with your tax affairs, you can subsequently vary that nomination at any time in the future, and the variation can be backdated by up to two years. In the case of a married couple or civil partnership, both must sign the nomination and any subsequent variation.

For example:

Ian buys a holiday home in North Wales in December 2006. In January 2007  he writes to his tax office to make an election that his home in Stockport should be his ‘main residence’. In July 2009 he decides to sell the holiday home.

He writes to the tax office in July 2009 ‘varying’ the election making the North Wales property his main residence. Two months later, he writes again making the property in Stockport again the main residence. Because   the   North Wales property was   properly   nominated   as   his  “main residence” for a period (July and August 2009), the last 36 months of the gain are exempt from CGT.

The house in Stockport has a period of two months when it was not the ‘main residence’ and the eventual gain on the sale of this property will need to be time apportioned and the two month period will not be exempt. However, the chances are that the gain for such a short period would be covered by the annual exemption from capital gains tax, which most people rarely use.

It is important to make the election in the first instance, when two homes are available. If the election is not made, then there is no opportunity to vary it. If you have failed to make the election within the time limit, please do speak to us about the situation,  we can advise on the options available.

Ten bite sized online video guides from HMRC for new and small businesses

Topics include setting up in business, record keeping, income tax, corporation tax and VAT.