Budget 05 - What would help your business?

[MikeH]

The budget will be announced later today so I thought it would be interesting to find out what would assist your business?

Would you like VAT to be adjusted? What about corporation tax? Should the £10K tax free bracket be adjusted or should the existing % be changed to reduce the burden on your companies profits?

These are just a couple of simple suggestions but what would help your business?

Mike.

[Alpha]

Well to be honest Mike to help MY business the Chancellor needs to introduce more taxes, more variations,more penalties for non compliance, more red tape, and make running a business thoroughly incomprehensible to all but the few :D

But to help everyone else I would like to see a rationalisation of the tax rates of small limited companies with sole traders and partnerships but recognition in the tax regime of the extra risks that all these people take over and above the self employed.
In the same vein I would like to see the removal of IR35 legislation, S660A removed and the treatment of all limited companies to be the same.

I would currently not change vat rates but I would like to see the threshold at which it is charged to be raised to at least £80k.

I would like to see genuine tax breaks for SME's to provide decent training for their staff to enable us to compete in the global markets.

Thats just for starters but I'm trying to keep it brief

[MikeH]

Well to be honest Mike to help MY business the Chancellor needs to introduce more taxes, more variations,more penalties for non compliance, more red tape, and make running a business thoroughly incomprehensible to all but the few


That's a very good point, but I sincerely hope that they don't do this.

But to help everyone else I would like to see a rationalisation of the tax rates of small limited companies with sole traders and partnerships but recognition in the tax regime of the extra risks that all these people take over and above the self employed.


Would you care to elaborate on this a little? How do you think that they can be better balanced?

S660A removed and the treatment of all limited companies to be the same.

Has there been any further development on this. It seems ridiculous that a couple cannot decide how best to distribute their income. It does not affect me personally but I think it is crazy that the IR can treat this as tax avoidance. Who are they to decide how much contribution a spouse makes to the business.

Mike.

[Alpha]

To be honest I was thinking mainly along the lines of removing completely the farce of having the first £10k 'profit' (now non distributed income) which created the myriads of company formations for the wrong reasons (i.e. to try and save tax) which then created a long line of window cleaners, hairdressers et al as limited companies when there was no commercial reason for them to be so.

Any other movement would be at odds with my final comments (to treat all companies equally)

With regards to s660A the landmark case (Artic systems) is at this very moment starting along the appeal process and we should have a (hopefully) positive judgment in the very near future. (In my and other commentators opinions the process of the ruling was flawed)

[MikeH]

The 10K bracket was a arguably ill thought out. I remember reading in a paper about all the London cab drivers forming LTD's to save tax.

I hope that sense is seen in the Arctic Systems case, it is another example of our legal system setting precedence that may affect many other people.

Mike.

[StartUp]

Well he increased the stamp duty threshold.

That's great for my other business :D

Will save a bit of money on future property purchases

Julia