The January edition of our Accountancy Matters newsletter is here! Give it a read for all the latest financial news & advice, plus key dates for your calendar: Accountancy Matters - Jan 2020

It’s Friday. And after a long working week, you can finally go home knowing you have two blissful days off. Every office has its own Friday routines and traditions to celebrate the end of a busy week, so we’ve done our research and selected a few of our favourites! 1. Casual Dress code It’s not uncommon for a company to have casual Fridays where employees are able to step out of the suits and into something more comfortable! It’s not only good for the employees but also the b

SMEs across the UK are chasing more than £50bn of late payments, highly impacting their cash flow and productivity. A study surveying 1,000 CEOs, founders, directors, and senior management staff in SMEs has shown that small and medium size British businesses are tracking down late payments worth more than £50bn. The research revealed that SMEs are chasing five outstanding invoices at once, with an average of £8,5000 being owed and 1.5 hours per day – an equivalent of almost 9

Fines issued by HMRC have surged in value by nearly a third in the past three years, rising significantly faster than the amount of tax collected HMRC raised £816m in fines in 2018-19, up from £620m in 2015-16, an increase of 32%. This is a much faster rate of increase than the amount of tax collected by HMRC, which has increased by 19.2% from £495bn to £590bn over the same period. The amount of data on taxpayers at HMRC’s disposal, and its ability to analyse that data, has s

With the self assessment deadline looming, HMRC has issued a special agent update on the topic to help with last minute technical questions to avoid falling foul of overly complex tax codes. HMRC receives over 11 million digital tax returns each year and approximately 90,000 need clerical review due to mistakes in the first submission. This results in a delay in processing returns, HMRC warns. Amended returns and self assessment closure letters appear to be some of the most p