The issue of late payments has become a growing concern for small businesses. Recent data from Xero Small Business Insights reveals that, on average, payments were made 7.3 days late between April and June 2024. This is an increase of 1.8 days from the previous quarter. This marks the largest quarterly increase in late payments…

Recently, there has been a significant increase in company closures due to petitions from creditors, particularly HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). In 2023, forced closures rose by 63 per cent compared to 2022. This spike is mainly due to high interest rates making Covid-era debts hard to manage, along with HMRC’s backlog of cases. Many…

Recently, many pensioners received surprising news: a tax bill for the first time. This stems from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) decision to send letters to over 140,000 pensioners, who have taxable income but are not filing Self-Assessment. In total, 560,000 pensioners will receive letters, covering the 2023/24 tax year. Why is this happening? The…

In a bid to ease the regulatory burden on businesses, new thresholds for classifying company sizes have been announced. This change, introduced by the previous Government, could allow around 132,000 businesses to skip mandatory audits. Under the current plans, which may be subject to change, companies will be able to benefit from the threshold changes…

The first Budget of the new Labour Government has been announced to take place on 30 October 2024. Ahead of the budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced that spending cuts worth £13.5 billion will be required over the next two years. She explained that this was due to the scale of the previous Government’s overspending,…

King Charles delivered his speech to Parliament last month following the election, setting out the priorities of the new Labour Government for the months ahead. The speech included 40 pieces of legislation that the Government plan to implement. To help you understand what the next five years may hold, here are the details of all…