Have you Started Planning your Christmas Party?

Make sure it is just that, and not a reward!

Unlike entertaining customers, some of the costs of entertaining employees are generally allowable against business profits.

Generally speaking, as long as the total costs of your parties and other social functions, which you have attended in a tax year, are less than £150 (inclusive of VAT) per person attending, there will be no tax implications.

However, if the event is deemed to be a reward, bonus or incentive then employer would NOT be able to reclaim the VAT, and the employee will be liable for income tax as a benefit in kind.

Beat the tax man, by ensuring that everyone from the office invited to your Christmas party. Keep a good track of all the costs and ensure that they are below the HMRC threshold of £150 including VAT per person attending. This includes all the costs, i.e. room hire, meal, drinks, transport and accommodation.

Our Clarity365 project tracking functionality is perfect for tracking costs for each event. You can allocate all of the party costs and employee expenses, along with electronic copies of the receipts, so that you can demonstrate you are compliant with the HMRC Ruling. Helping you to enjoy the party without the risk of a tax hangover. ​

Tax Relief and Incentives for Business

Investing in Business has rapidly grown over the past years, particularly with the rise in cloud based business solutions and ideas.

Therefore there is a growing amount of diverse finance, as opposed to the traditional loan from the bank. Examples of this would be crowd funding and peer to peer lending.

Crowd funding has taken a huge rise as of late, everything from business propositions all the way to a very recent one where the Neath Community need to raise £11,000 so they can have their Christmas Lights switched on. In fact, thanks to Crowd Funding they have now raised £16,500 so it really does show an online support for new businesses and incentives whatever they may be!

The good news is that actually if your new business meets specific requirements then you may also be entitled to help with business rates or tax relief for research or development. This is all thanks to the wonderful people at Business is Great.

So why not check out their links and see what you could be entitled too today:

• Business rate reliefs

  An overview on which properties are eligible for discounts on their business rates, and how to apply for these reliefs
  

• Enterprise Zones

  There are currently 24 Enterprise Zones across the UK and they support new businesses through a range of incentives
  

• The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS)

  This aims to encourage investment in small and early stage companies by reducing the risk to investors of investing in these types of companies
  

• Employment Allowance

  Employers can reduce the amount of National Insurance contributions (NICs) they pay for their employees by up to £2,000.
  

• Annual Investment Allowance

  Currently stands at £500,000. How to claim, what is covered and how to calculate it
  

• Capital Allowances

  A tax relief designed to allow the cost of certain of your company or organisation's assets to be written off against its taxable profits
  

• Enterprise Investment Scheme

  Helps small companies raise finance by offering tax relief to investors who buy new shares in their companies. Check here to see if your business qualifies
  

• Venture Capital Trust (VCT) Scheme

  Designed to help smaller companies raise finance by offering a range of tax reliefs to investors who invest in VCTs, who in turn onward invest or lend to small and medium sized businesses
  

• Capital Gains Roll-over Relief

  You may be able to delay paying Capital Gains Tax if you either sell (‘dispose of’) some business assets or use all or part of the proceeds to buy new assets. This relief means you won’t pay any tax until you sell the new asset
  

• Research and development tax credits

  Small businesses can get 225 per cent tax relief on their research and development spending
  

• Patent Box

  Eenables companies to apply a lower rate of Corporation Tax to profits earned after 1 April 2013 from its patented inventions and certain other innovations.
  

• Social Investment Tax Relief

  This provides a range of income and capital gains tax reliefs which can be claimed by individual investors for investments they have made in social enterprises, with a view to helping people and communities. It is in place for investments made or capital gains arising in the period from 6 April 2014 to 5 April 2019
  

• Tax reliefs for the creative industries

  A group of five corporation tax reliefs that allow qualifying companies in the creative industries to claim a larger deduction, or in some circumstances claim a payable tax credit when calculating their taxable profits
  

• Entrepreneur's Relief

  When an entrepreneur sells or closes their business, they need only pay ten per cent Capital Gains Tax on any qualifying profits
  
  
  
  (source: http://www.greatbusiness.gov.uk/tax-relief-and-incentives-for-businesses-and-investors/)
  

Never Lose a Receipt Again with Clarity365

Lego Vs group interviews

I used to love Lego as a child, I could build an awesome tower using all the bricks out of the bucket fobbing off any of the instructions to build an airport or submarine as that was dull, no instead I'd make some Picasso style creation which in my eyes, was simply amazing and another bonus was how quickly you could swallow one and then end up in A&E (mine was within approximately thirty seconds, and it was a red specific brick).

Lego is still just as popular as it was back in my youth, I visited a friend who has a five year old boy and this young whippet had recently moved on from the big Lego bricks to the small ones (growing up you know) and I found myself losing all sense of time and reality working alongside him, then I suddenly thought; I have done this before in adult hood and no, I didn't choke on one.

Adult Lego

So where have I, as a fully fledged adult toyed with Lego before. I had this terrible flashback to when I was about 18 and I went for a interview for an established company (a'hem) which began with an initial "telephone interview", you know where they used to ask you:

"If you had an angry customer would you...1. punch them in the face, or 2. relax because remember, the customer is ALWAYS right

I was passed onto the secondary stages. However just to digress, how could anybody fail those interviews...the only thing I can think of is that a large amount of cats are applying for jobs, as they blatantly couldn't press the right button on the keypad. I look back now and it almost felt like I was going for the final stages of Britain's Got Talent, all for a call centre role on minimum wage and not forgetting the 24 hour, 7 day a week shifts I'd have to start forcing myself to go too.

Second stage

In I walk, all fresh faced and nervous about what was about to happen, and suddenly I find myself surrounded by other people whilst quickly being split into teams. This was new to me, and I did feel like I was enrolling to the Army. "Sit down and be quiet" squawked a particularly Alpha female manager, if she'd asked us to do ten sit ups...we probably would have done.

Then, said Lego was slammed by said Alpha female onto the table into our pathetic groups, with some straws. Our objective was to...well build something. There I am, as a mortified teenager suddenly realising I was never going to get this job as: A: I used to literally build towers and B: Swallow them so all in all, not good.

In the end

I look back and think who does this anymore in such an excruciating manner? Well tons still do, as I know a friend that went to a interview recently for a very well known shoe brand, and he was told, at the prime age of 39 to sit on the floor in a circle and in pairs, paint a picture to express how he "felt about the brand" needless to say he didn't stay. Though I did argue that at least they had glitter pens as well as paint so why not get creative? He didn't find that funny.

Yes, I've had other interviews that were excruciating, for example I was asked "how would you sell this pen" I mean come on...and I answered terribly as I started listing its qualities, like it was a fine wine but it wasn't, it was a bic.

Here at Data Clarity we don't do anything like that. We don't ask people to build Lego or to pretend they were dealing with a difficult person. Nope, because we actually want to learn about the persons history and soul, as that's all that matters to us - not if they can build a bridge with Lego. If the person wants to become part of the Data Clarity team then we'll happily have them on board for their personality as if the attitude is right, the rest can be taught. We'll always expand in the right way.