Ltd Accountancy Ltd

Self-assessment tax return is something we've helped our clients with for years. We bring a great deal of experience and expertise to our self-assessment tax returns, making sure to save you both time and money. We'll save you hours — and sometimes days — of poring through the year's receipts, invoices and bank statements, figuring out what needs to be put in, completing the return and sending it off to HMRC. We will advise what exactly you can claim as business expenses so you can offset them against your earnings, which tax schemes you can join and more.

To prepare your tax return we would need:

1. A list of all the expenses for your business, including those that are used for your business only partially. We will then work out what percentage of them you can claim back.
2. A list of all your product sales or fees charged to customers, including unpaid invoices.
3. Details of other taxed or untaxed income you received — for example, bank interest, PAYE income from a weekend or part-time job, capital gain or anything else that needs to be declared on your self-assessment tax return.

If you're starting out on your own, you may have thought of putting off your self-assessment until you start earning enough to get taxed on. However, HMRC requires you to prepare a tax return irrespective of whether you've made a profit or a loss. Any losses you incur can be either offset against tax you paid through PAYE in the same year or offset against your business earnings in the following year.

Every business has to prepare its financial statements (or annual accounts) at the end of each financial or tax year. A company's end of year accounts show how well the business has performed over a 12-month period. It must be prepared in accordance with the applicable reporting standards and Companies House guidelines.

Annual accounts will always contain a Profit & Loss Account (or an Income Statement) and a Balance Sheet. The Profit & Loss Account shows how much revenue the business generated during the year and what the costs were. The Balance Sheet shows what the business owns and what it owes to others. A company's accounts may also include a Cash Flow Statement.

One of the important requirements is that statutory accounts must represent a "true and fair view" of the company's financial position. Accounts are used by HMRC, by owners and shareholders to guide financial decisions, and by any potential lender considering advancing a loan to the business or its owner.

Companies House allows a micro-business to deliver annual accounts in a simplified format. However, it would be rather challenging to prepare a set of compliant accounts without any accounting knowledge — and errors can lead to fines or overpaid tax. You must file your annual accounts within 9 months of the accounting year end.

If you're self-employed or a one-man company owner you would have to register your business for VAT only when your 12-month turnover reaches £90,000. However, if you're in an industry where your services are considered more seriously and it's possible you can gain a big contract or sale only if you are VAT registered, you may choose to register voluntarily, even if your turnover is still below the registration threshold. Another reason for registering for VAT earlier is when you have lots of suppliers' invoices for which you can claim a VAT refund.

If you get in touch with us, we can monitor your finances, let you know when it's best to register (and which schemes to register for) or de-register for VAT. That way, not only will we make sure you're always compliant with HMRC rules, but also save you money whenever possible. With regards to VAT, every business is unique, can fall under different subsets of rules and needs its own, tailored service.

We prepare your VAT returns as part of our accounting service. We can either use your own bookkeeping to tailor your return, or collect all of your financial paperwork and create it from scratch — making sure it's thorough, correct and compliant, and always sent on time. We take great care to correctly account for less obvious transactions including employees' expenses, goods and services for partial business use, bad customer debts, sales discounts and goods and services for export.

If you own a micro business or SME and need to pay salaries to yourself and your employees, you will save much needed time and unnecessary worries by handing over the payroll service to a professional payroll agency or accountant. An accountant will always be on top of any inevitable changes to HMRC legislation, so you'll never fall afoul of being non-compliant with payroll reporting regulations. This also means you reduce the risk of any PAYE penalties and arrears. Your payroll will be compliant with Real Time Information requirements and your data will be secure.

Another benefit is that you won't need to pay for additional software to deal with payroll on top of all your other software expenses. We'll calculate your employee's income tax and NI contributions as well as make adjustments for sickness, paternity and maternity leave. We will also sort out special payment events such as furlough and anything else that might come along.

We will advise your monthly PAYE bill payable to HMRC and create P45 forms for your employees when they leave your workplace. We will email electronic payslips and produce end of year P60s for you and your employees. Lastly, we can help by taking care of employees' expenses and benefits, making sure they are handled appropriately and taxed correctly.

We can offer you a company administration service that takes care of all statutory filings. This service is already part of our Bespoke package, can be added on request to our Standard package, and typically includes:

• Share allotments and transfers
• Dividends
• Appointment and resignation of officers
• Officer change of particulars
• Change of registered office
• Change of accounting reference dates
• PSC appointments, changes and resignations
• Confirmation statement filing
• Change of company name
• Dormant accounts filing
• Company formation