Recent content by Peter Cooper

  1. Peter Cooper

    Is Tea and Cake An Acceptable Business Expense?

    Not as a sole trader. However, a limited company she's a director of could buy her up to £300/yr of coffee and biscuits a year.. 😄
  2. Peter Cooper

    Budget 2024 - Predictions

    2p cut in main rate of NICs will shrink the tax advantages of taking dividends vs a salary a little more and lower the point where salary becomes more advantageous (though that point is still pretty high, somewhere around £400k or so). A gigantic shift from several years ago, however, where it...
  3. Peter Cooper

    Commission payments for non-employees?

    This is a curiously messy area at the best of times. It largely depends on the nature of the relationship. If these are random individuals for whom making referrals is not part of their day to day work or business, they are likely not business entities with any real capacity to raise an invoice...
  4. Peter Cooper

    What are your thoughts on today's budget?

    100% with you, Byzantium. Also, isn't it funny they put up the dividend tax rates along with NI a couple of years ago, but they don't put them down 2% now to match? There is actually no benefit to the dividends route now versus salary at a certain point (in fact, it could even be worse to take...
  5. Peter Cooper

    What are your thoughts on today's budget?

    Employees get a bit more in their pocket from January (though we increase salaries then anyway) but at a higher business level, absolutely nothing. Full expensing is a complete charade - very few businesses use up their entire £1M AIA as it is, yet it's being painted as a big tax cut "for...
  6. Peter Cooper

    Cities will be unrecognizable this time next year

    I had to go into the City of London on Tuesday for medical reasons and right now it's definitely a shadow of its former self. Very, very quiet. At least a quarter of the people I encountered in the street were in construction/trades/white van folks, saw almost no "City types". Sadly I also saw a...
  7. Peter Cooper

    Help with Rent whilst WFH?

    We're in a similar situation and the landlord is the local council, but basically all you can get is deferred payments, etc, which makes no difference to what you actually pay in the end. So we're paying thousands essentially for posh furniture storage ;)
  8. Peter Cooper

    Spending from the business bank account for non business expenses

    (Disclaimer: I am not an accountant, not your accountant, and none of the below is fully applicable to anyone all of the time. You really need to know what you're doing or have an accountant who does.) Other posters are correct for your specific example, but in the spirit of your question it's...
  9. Peter Cooper

    Bye bye offices?

    I've actually been considering buying/renting a café or something towards the tail end of this (there are a lot in my small town, and I suspect some will want to retire/get out of the business after this nightmare) and running it as a sort of drop-in office/club for local WFH businesses...
  10. Peter Cooper

    Bye bye offices?

    Half question but also half "let's see what other small business people are thinking/doing"! My company rents three small offices in an enterprise centre. Because the council refused to treat them as one hereditament we don't qualify for SBRR so we're basically paying £2000/mo rent + rates for...
  11. Peter Cooper

    Furloughed driver refusing to hand work van back

    It sounds like he's "working to rule". In which case, he might attempt to refuse all further communication, given he seems to think communicating with you is provision of service. As such, I would make it clear that he is in possession of a company vehicle to which the company has a right to...
  12. Peter Cooper

    Which grant to apply for

    Just to clarify, only if you were getting SBRR or rural rates relief as of mid March. If your business has multiple small properties totalling under £15k, you get nothing if more than one is over £2899 RV due to not qualifying for SBRR at all :-(
  13. Peter Cooper

    Just over Rateable value threshold

    Hmm, this may actually play into your favour then if that's the ONLY way, because to the best of my knowledge (I spent a lot of time reading up on VOA regulations due to my own situation) you SHOULD have two hereditaments for such a setup as of right now and there might be potential for...
  14. Peter Cooper

    £200k and FSCS - an idea...

    We had the same problem and have opened a business account with Monzo (who are FSCS protected, like Starling). Monzo only introduced the business product a couple of weeks ago so it is probably not well known yet. So we have both Starling and Monzo Business now. Annoyingly you have to open a...
  15. Peter Cooper

    Just over Rateable value threshold

    Given that the grants are based on the situation at a certain date in March, I'd imagine being able to retroactively change things to qualify would be very tough, if not possible, sadly. You may be able to convince the VOA and your council of this if you are only able to directly move between...
See more
Top Bottom
Community
Articles
Menu