At Taxation we always aim to bring you the information that you need to help you to do your job. For most of the year, that’s professional articles, news, case reports and replies to your tax queries among other things.
However, at Christmas you should be able to relax a little.
Well that’s the theory, although with the 31 January self-assessment tax return filing deadline now looming on the horizon as well as the advanced Companies House deadline for company accounts, the practicalities of slowing down a little may be slightly harder to achieve.
But here’s an idea: why not combine your love of tax with some fun and games. Find the hidden words in our wordsearch for the chance to win a bottle of bubbly.
Alternatively, challenge your colleagues to a game of Mistakes and Adder (any similarity to another well-known board game is purely coincidental).
Finally, take our Budget Bonanza test and impress everyone with your comprehensive knowledge of 21st century Budget speeches. Why not pass the test around while having your Christmas dinner.
We can guarantee that your family will truly be amazed. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Wordsearch
Overcoming our fear of spiders and the dark, we’ve been down into the cellars at Taxation Towers and selected a bottle of vintage champagne as a worthy prize for the winner of our wordsearch competition.
Ten words relating to tax are concealed in the grid; can you spot them all? Words run vertically, horizontally, diagonally or backwards and the same grid letter may form part of more than one word.
Nine of the words are listed below. If you can find the tenth concealed secret six-letter word on the tax theme, then you could be in with a chance of winning the champagne. Email the secret word to us no later than Friday 14 January 2011.
- Capital
- Duty
- Entrepreneur
- Gain,
- Prudence
- Resident
- Simplification
- Tax
- VAT
Mistakes and Adders
Are you a tax adviser who wanted to be an entrepreneur? Or are you an entrepreneur who always secretly wanted to be a tax adviser?
Either way, why not indulge your fantasy with our Mistakes and Adders game. Of course, if you are an avid reader of Taxation we hope that you’ve not made mistakes, or at least not too many (or at least not too serious).
Adders? Well who among us, when explaining that we ‘work in tax’, hasn’t heard the reply, ‘Oh, you must be good at maths’.
You’ll need dice and counters for this game. Taking it in turn, players throw the dice to move onto and around the board tracing their business from initial meeting with their tax adviser through partnership and incorporation as below. Move up the red arrows and down the blue.
The first one to 64 becomes the winning entrepreneur.
Who needs The Apprentice to prove their worth?
DOWNLOAD THE MISTAKES AND ADDERS BOARD
- Initial meeting with client.
- Negotiate fee structure with client.
- Client agrees to pay by monthly standing order. Move forwards 9 spaces.
- New client signs engagement letter.
- New client provides P45.
- Authority form 64-8 signed by client.
- HMRC form CWF1 signed by client.
- Class 2 NIC payments start.
- Claim repayment of PAYE tax.
- Discuss business structure.
- Delay in obtaining UTR. Go back 4 spaces.
- Discuss business location with client.
- HMRC ‘security checks’ tax repayment. Go back 8 spaces.
- Client decides to operate as a sole trader.
- Client takes on a new employee.
- Use sticky red dot to prioritise VAT registration. Go forwards 14 spaces.
- Discuss NIC holiday scheme.
- HMRC loses CWF1.
- Resend CWF1 with red spot. Move forwards ten spaces.
- Prepare cash-flow forecast for loan application.
- Prepare business accounts.
- Explain to client that he is taxed on profits, not drawings.
- VAT investigation problems. Back 14 spaces.
- Calculate income tax and Class 4 NICs.
- Explain basis of self assessment to client.
- Waste time trying to find client records. Move back 4 spaces.
- Prepare PAYE forms P35 and P14.
- File P35 with HMRC.
- Prepare P11D for employee.
- Client takes on a partner.
- Accept appointment to act for new partner. Move forwards 5 spaces.
- Prepare partner’s tax return.
- Prepare partnership tax return.
- Discuss partners’ cars and associated expenses.
- Bill for VAT advice on flat-rate scheme and other matters. Move forwards 12 spaces.
- Client decides to incorporate.
- Delay in processing CT41G. Back 10 spaces.
- Explain to client that a director is an employee.
- Set up PAYE scheme for company.
- Prepare company accounts.
- File accounts with Companies House – incur late filing penalty. Go back 2 spaces.
- Accounts and tax computation to HMRC.
- HMRC PAYE investigation.
- Resolve PAYE issues. Forwards 11 spaces.
- File company P35.
- Discover that client is drawing large sums of money from company.
- Prepare management accounts to justify dividends.
- Explain s 419 liability and arrange payment.
- Client transfers some shares to spouse.
- Client wishes to buy factory – discuss personal or corporate ownership.
- Review entitlement to entrepreneurs’ relief.
- Submission of company accounts.
- Claim research and development relief.
- Christmas party overspend means potential benefit-in-kind charges.
- Discuss injection of funds into company.
- Advice on acquisition of subsidiary.
- Prepare enterprise investment scheme (EIS) application.
- Check entitlement to business property relief.
- Employee share scheme is established.
- Mistake with EIS application. Back 6 spaces.
- Advise on becoming non-UK resident.
- Business sold.
- Client leaves UK without paying firm’s fee. Go back 17 spaces.
- Made it! You’re a successful entrepreneur.
Budget Bonanza
Amaze your friends and rack up some CPD at the same time. Listed below are some phrases from Budget speeches between 2000 and 2010. Score one point each for getting the correct Chancellor and the year. Have a bonus point for getting the right month with the 2010 Budgets.
Answers will be published online in the new year.
- ‘I am doubling entrepreneurs’ relief for capital gains tax.’
- ‘For business assets held for more than two years, capital gains tax will be cut to 10%.’
- ‘For the next two years, venture capital trusts will secure tax relief for investments of up to £200,000 a year not at the lower rate of 20p but at the higher rate of 40p.’
- ‘I am extending the help which allows loss-making companies to reclaim losses on profits made in the last three years.’
- ‘I commend this Budget to the House.’
- ‘When we say that we are all in this together, we mean it.’
- ‘And with the new 10p rate on savings, 1.5 million pensioners will, for the first time, pay tax at half the rate of the past, at 10p not 20p.’
- ‘From today, stamp duty on shared-ownership homes will not be required until buyers own 80% of the equity in their home.’
- ‘Prosperity for all. That is our goal.’
- ‘I will refocus tax incentives for venture capital, with a 30% relief for investments in venture capital trusts.’
- ‘We intend to get all taxpayers’ money back.’
- ‘I will replace the eight existing tax schemes for pensions with a single lifetime allowance.’
- ‘Since we came into Government our first duty has been to secure economic stability.’
- ‘I am also increasing the amount of investment on which tax relief is available under the Enterprise Investment Scheme from £400,000 to £500,000.’
- ‘Starting in May, a confidential phone line will advise claimants on how to move from the hidden economy.’
- ‘In this my eleventh Budget, my report to the country is of rising employment and rising investment.’
- ‘The small companies tax rate will be cut yet again – cut from 20 pence to 19 pence.’
- ‘I will provide more generous annual relief for long-life assets, raising the relief from 6% to 10%.’
- ‘The Inland Revenue’s discussion document on residence and domicile is published today.’
- ‘No return to boom and bust.’
- ‘To ensure help direct for British film-makers, we will replace existing reliefs with new tax reliefs.’
- ‘I have always said that our prudence was for a purpose.’
- ‘We are ready to sign tax information exchange agreements with ... Dominica, Grenada and Belize.’
- ‘I can abolish the tax paid by millions of bingo players.’
- ‘I will restrict pension tax relief for those with incomes over £150,000.’
- ‘I will exempt more estates from inheritance tax. I will raise the starting point for tax from just over £260,000 to – from April 6th – £275,000.’
- ‘We will not return to boom and bust.’
- ‘The one penny increase in the main rate of NICs will not affect anyone earning under £20,000 a year.’
- ‘I will from next April cut the basic rate of income tax from 22p down to 20p. The lowest basic rate for 75 years.’
- ‘To create a truly family friendly tax system we must integrate tax and benefits.’
- ‘We’ve been tough but we’ve also been fair.’
- ‘We are raising the personal tax allowance from £4,895 to £5,035.’
- ‘For all small and medium-sized businesses the 40% capital allowances – which I introduced in my 1997 Budget – will be made permanent.’
- ‘Our prudence is for a purpose.’
- ‘A total of more than three million businesses will now also qualify for 100% allowances for investment in I.T. which I am today extending for one further year.’
- ‘Fairness and opportunity for everyone in Britain.’
- ‘I am happy to be able to abolish this new duty before it is even introduced.’
- ‘From tomorrow, firms with turnovers of £56,000 or less will not have to register for or pay VAT – the most generous VAT threshold in Europe.’
- ‘Last year I cut the long-term capital gains rate for business assets from 40 pence to 10 pence. I can now go further.’
- ‘We reduce the incentive to convert income to capital gains.’
- ‘And I commend it to the House.’