Most pundits agree that the growing disruption posed by the Coronavirus outbreak combined with continuing Brexit uncertainty – exactly what will our trading relationship with the EU be from January 2021 – are likely to have a dampening effect on demand and supply; a combination that will lead to a slow-down in global economic activity.

It is doubtful that Budget announcements this week will do much to quell the anxieties of small business owners.

There are concerns about the cost of meeting sick-pay obligations as increasing numbers of employees self-isolate in response to government advice to contain the spread of the virus.

Will business owners be offered more time to pay their taxes?

As the outbreak in the UK is at an early stage expect a staged approach to business support. It is feasible that the government will have to print money – so-called quantitative easing – to cover the funding support required by the UK business community. This is the method used during the banking crisis of 2008 when the banks were the recipients of government’s largesse.

Without a doubt, on its own the Coronavirus poses a significant challenge for all of us and in particular the survival of vast number of a small and medium sized business in the UK, the backbone and engine room of our UK economy.

Fingers crossed that Rishi Sunak and his Treasury advisors come up with adequate support this week. Watch this space for our budget summaries to be published later this week.

1 March 2020 – Due date for Corporation Tax due for the year ended 31 May 2019.

2 March 2020 – Self assessment tax for 2019/19 paid after this date will incur a 5% surcharge.

19 March 2020 – PAYE and NIC deductions due for month ended 5 March 2020. (If you pay your tax electronically the due date is 22 March 2020)

19 March 2020 – Filing deadline for the CIS300 monthly return for the month ended 5 March 2020.

19 March 2020 – CIS tax deducted for the month ended 5 March 2020 is payable by today.

1 April 2020 – Due date for Corporation Tax due for the year ended 30 June 2019.

19 April 2020 – PAYE and NIC deductions due for month ended 5 April 2020. (If you pay your tax electronically the due date is 22 April 2020)

19 April 2020 – Filing deadline for the CIS300 monthly return for the month ended 5 April 2020.

19 April 2020 – CIS tax deducted for the month ended 5 April 2020 is payable by today.

30 April 2020 – 2018-19 tax returns filed after this date will be subject to an additional £10 per day late filing penalty.

Pubs will benefit from £1,000 business rates discount from April 2020.

The cut is on top of previously announced plans to slash the bills of small shops by 50%.

In a fresh demonstration of the government’s support for communities up and down the country, a new Pubs Relief will be introduced in April, with £1,000 being taken off the business rates bills of small pubs who qualify.

As many as 18,000 pubs are expected to benefit from the discount.

The relief will come on top of an extended retail discount which smaller pubs are also eligible to claim. Those able to claim both reliefs will benefit from a possible £13,500 off their annual bills.

From April this year:

• small shops and cafes will see their bills halved as the retail discount, currently a third off, is extended to 50%
• music venues and cinemas will become eligible for the retail discount
• a £1,500 discount for local newspapers office space will be extended for a further five years

Regional variations may apply. Check with your local rating authority to see how this announcement will affect your rates bill in 2020-21.

From April 2020, the National Living Wage (NLW) and National Minimum Wage (NMW) pay rates will increase as set out below.

• NLW rates for workers aged 25 and over – from £8.21 to £8.72 per hour.
• NMW rates:
  • workers aged 21–24 — from £7.70 to £8.20 per hour
  • workers aged 18–20 — from £6.15 to £6.45 per hour
  • workers aged 16–18 — from £4.35 to £4.55 per hour
  • apprentice rate — from £3.90 to £4.15 per hour.

Workers must be at least school leaving age to get the NMW. They must be 25 or over to get the NLW.

Contracts for payments below the NLW and NMW rates are not legally binding. The worker is still entitled to the NMW or NLW. Workers are also entitled to the correct minimum wage if they are:

• part-time
• casual labourers, for example someone hired for one day
• agency workers
• workers and homeworkers paid by the number of items they make
• apprentices
• trainees, workers on probation
• disabled workers
• agricultural workers
• foreign workers
• seafarers
• offshore workers

Employers are reminded that these rates are not optional. HMRC police the NMW and NLW regulations and employers found to be in breach will be subject to penalties and will be required to repay any arrears to affected employees.

What can we expect from the budget next week?

On the expenditure side, infrastructure and the NHS seem to be the two major areas for investment. HS2 and other rail improvements in the North are likely to be beneficiaries as will carbon capture and other climate related projects, for example, improving the energy efficiency of homes, schools and hospitals.

During the last election, the government disclosed that it will not be increasing any of the major taxes and has recently published details of an increase in the NIC threshold, to £9,500.

Corporation tax was due to reduce to 17% (from the present 19%) from April 2020. However, Boris Johnson did state that this intended reduction would be dropped, and the rate maintained at 19%.

There is speculation that higher rate tax relief will be trimmed for contributions into private pension funds from April 2020. This does add weight to the planning option to review top-up payments this month if you pay Income Tax at the 40% or 45% rates.

A cross-party group of MPs has called for a reduction in the rate of Inheritance Tax, from 40% to 10%, together with a reduction in many of the Inheritance Tax allowances and reliefs.

Business rates are another target for relief in an attempt to support beleaguered High Street businesses. Additional support has already been announced for retailers and pubs.

Meanwhile, back at number 11 Downing Street, Rishi Sunak will be burning the midnight oil to prepare himself for his dispatch-box presentation on 11 March. We will be reporting on the outcome of his disclosures in due course.

The Competition and Marketing Authority has published information recently that points to evidence of potential mis-selling and unfair contract terms in the leasehold housing market.

Their press release is reproduced below:

As part of a probe into the industry, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is concerned that leasehold homeowners have been unfairly treated and prospective buyers misled by housing developers. These concerns include:

• Ground rents: homeowners having to pay escalating ground rents, which in some cases can double every 10 years. This increase is often built into contracts, meaning people can often struggle to sell their homes and find themselves trapped.
• Cost of the freehold: the CMA has seen evidence that people have been misled about the cost of converting their leasehold to freehold ownership. When buying their home, some people were told the freehold would cost only a small sum, but later down the line this price had increased by thousands of pounds with little to no warning.
• Misleading information: not being told upfront that a property is leasehold and what that means. Some developers are failing to explain the differences between leasehold and freehold when directly asked, and some actually tell potential buyers that there is no difference. By the time people find out the realities of owning a leasehold, including the regular charges to be paid, they are often unable to pull out of the purchase, or would face significant difficulties if they tried to do so.
• Unreasonable fees: being charged excessive and disproportionate fees for things like the routine maintenance of a building’s shared spaces or making home improvements. If people want to challenge such charges, the process is often difficult and costly, meaning few people decide to go through with it.

The CMA is now completing all the necessary legal work to launch direct enforcement action against companies it believes have broken consumer protection law. This could result in firms signing legal commitments to change how they do business. If they fail to make the required changes, the CMA could act through the courts to make them comply with the law.

The evidence found by the CMA also supports the case for changes to the law in this area. The CMA will continue to work with the Government on its reform plans for the leasehold market, including supporting the move to ban the sale of new leasehold houses and reduce ground rents for new leases to zero.

As part of its work, the CMA is developing consumer advice for people who own, or are looking to buy, a leasehold property. This will offer tips on what they can do when faced with permission fees and service charges they consider unjustified.

We have reported earlier this year that from 6 April 2020, residential property sales that are subject to capital gains tax will need to be reported to HMRC within 30 days of the sale. Any CGT due will also need to be paid in this 30 day period.

Property sales affected will include:

• a property that you’ve not used as your main home
• a holiday home
• a property which you have let for people to live in
• a property that you have inherited and have not used as your main home

Property sales that will not be subject to this 30 day reporting deadline include:

• a legally binding contract for the sale was made before 6 April 2020
• you meet the criteria for Private Residence Relief
• the sale was made to a spouse or civil partner
• the gains (including any other chargeable residential property gains in the same tax year) are within your tax free allowance (called the Annual Exempt Amount)
• you sold the property for a loss
• the property is outside the UK

Accordingly, if you are contemplating a sale after 5 April 2020, please let us know in advance of the sale. In this way we can gather together all the information required to calculate any capital gain and ensure that returns are made in good time.

There are penalties for late disclosure.

Disposals by non-resident owners

If you are a non-UK resident you must continue to report sales or disposals of interests in UK property or land, regardless of whether there is a Capital Gains Tax liability, within 30 days of completion of the disposal.

You will no longer be able to defer payment of Capital Gains Tax via your Self-Assessment return, and any tax owed must be paid within the 30-day reporting and payment period.

This includes disposals of residential properties, non-residential properties and indirect disposals.

If a company makes loans to its employees (including directors) there may be tax consequences. The same may also apply to loans extended to their family members.

For example, the employer will have an obligation to report a beneficial loan to HMRC (and pay Class 1A NIC) and the deemed benefit would be a taxable benefit in kind for the relevant employee.

A beneficial loan is one that is interest free or the rate charged is below the “official rate” and the benefit is the difference between these interest rate charges.

Fortunately, not all loans create a tax problem, certain loans are exempt from this reporting obligation. These could include loans employers provided:

• in the normal course of a domestic or family relationship as an individual (not as a company you control, even if you are the sole owner and employee),
• with a combined outstanding balance due from an employee of less than £10,000 throughout the whole tax year,
• to an employee for a fixed and never changing period, and at a fixed and constant rate that was equal to or higher than HMRC’s official interest rate when the loan was taken out – the current rate is 2.5%,
• under identical terms and conditions as those provided to the public (this mostly applies to commercial lenders),
• that are ‘qualifying loans’, meaning all the interest charged to the loan account qualifies for tax relief.

Loans written off will also create a National Insurance Class 1 charge for the employee. They must be reported on a P11D and the employer has an obligation to deduct and pay Class 1 NIC, from the employee’s salary, on the amount written off for tax purposes.

And finally, loans by a company to its directors or shareholders may create additional corporation tax charges.

If you are contemplating loans to employees (or director/shareholders) or have current loans outstanding can we suggest that we undertake a review to ensure any tax consequences are minimised.

The Insolvency Service has issued a warning that fraudsters have been contacting investors in insolvent schemes claiming to be from the Official Receiver’s office or to have been appointed by the Official Receiver to help recover funds for a fee.

These approaches are always fraudulent.

Official Receivers or any agent legitimately instructed to act on their behalf will never ask you to pay a fee to get some or all of your investment back.

The Official Receiver can only make a return to you as a creditor in failed schemes if it is possible to identify and sell any remaining assets owned by the liquidated company you bought your investment from. All too often businesses of this nature have few if any, assets left to repay creditors and it can take several years to undertake complex asset recovery work and complete a liquidation.

Paying a fee will not make you a priority creditor, meaning you get paid faster or increase the chance of you getting any money back.

If you are asked to pay a fee to get your money back someone is attempting to scam you.

The Official Receiver does not charge investors a fee to get money back and does not employ anyone else to do this on their behalf.

You should report all fraudulent contact from individuals, stating they can get your lost investments back for a fee, to the Official Receivers. You can also report these approaches to Action Fraud.

At first sight, company car drivers whose private fuel costs are met by their employers may seem to be onto a good thing, but there is a nasty tax hit…

Enter, the Car Fuel Benefit charge.

Let’s say the following circumstances apply:

• list price of your car when new was £30,000
• your employer pays for all your private fuel
• CO2 emissions are 147 g/km, and
• the car has a diesel engine, 2000 cc.

The 2019-20 benefit in kind charge for the use of the car (this is added to your taxable income for the year) is £9,900. This would cost a standard rate taxpayer £165 a month in Income Tax.

But then the provision of private fuel would trigger an additional Car Fuel Benefit charge of £7,953. This would cost a standard rate taxpayer an extra £133 a month.

As the title of this article suggests it is possible to reimburse your employer for private fuel provided and avoid this Car Fuel Benefit charge completely. Here’s what you would need to do:

• First of all, calculate your private mileage for the 2019-20 tax year. Estimates won’t do, you will need to create evidence, a mileage log for example.
• Multiply this private mileage by HMRC’s Advisory Fuel Rate. The present rate per mile for a 2000 cc diesel car is 11p.

Armed with this information you can now do the sums. In the above example, if the driver’s private mileage was 5,000 miles during 2019-20, the amount that needs to be repaid to the employer is £550. That’s just £46 per month.

Which means, for an effective outlay of £550, the car driver – if a basic rate tax payer – will save £1,593 in tax (£7,953 x 20%). That’s an overall cash saving of £1,043.

If you are receiving private fuel from your employer, or indeed providing private fuel for your employees, it is well worth crunching the numbers to see if there is a cash advantage to repaying any private fuel.

There are deadlines to consider and we can help you with the math and the reporting processes required.

Final planning note for employers

The Car Fuel Benefit Charge not only creates a tax charge for the employee, it also creates a National Insurance charge for the employer. And so, allowing employees to repay their private fuel costs will also reduce your NIC costs. A classic win-win outcome.