Chancellor lands paper cuts on Blighty's small biz

George Osborne has promised small businesses that their tax returns in 2012 will be simpler. The admin-slash is one of several measures in today's Budget speech intended to make things easier for small and medium businesses. The new return will simply ask businesses to report the cash passing through them rather than more …

[John Smith 19]

"£20bn worth of low interest loans intended for SMEs"

Keep in mind who was #1 in *not* meeting its loan target to SME's

Step forward the peoples bank RBS.

*all* of them include essentially *repeat* business as part of their target.

Of course while the BoE base rate continues to be at near an all time *low* they have charged *double* figure rates.

If anyone wants some of this you can bet they will have to *fight* to one of them.

I try not to despise whiny ass bankers.

But that don't make it very easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "£20bn worth of low interest loans intended for SMEs"

The banks will dole it out, the same banks that are not doing it now, where they will still ask impossible conditions and rake in the interest.

If this works I will post a pic of me eating my socks.

[JDX]

What % tax on turnover?

As title... otherwise impossible to judge if it's good or bad news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What % tax on turnover?

Well time to close up shop and go on the dole.

Turnover tax... That will be tax on £70,000 please....

But I only made £11,000 profit after deductions costs and wages.

Tough.

[Eradicate all BB entrants]

Re: What % tax on turnover?

It says they have to report cash going through the business. No mention of tax on cash going through the business. And by 'going through' it would be safe to assume they might look at out goings in that report too.

[The Axe]

Not good

Sounds like a stealth tax. Make it sound good by removing complex rules but actually it's bad because it will mean paying more tax.

Does the government really mean a tax on turnover rather than a tax on profit. Unless the percentage is tiny it'll be a negative for all small companies.

[NG]

How it is better...

Isn't the implication that the tax will be 20% of the difference between money and money out, with no allowances for accruals, asset depreciation etc.

[Pen-y-gors]

Nope, not a turnover tax

"The OTS also suggested that a turnover-based tax (which would tax the

total amount of the sales of a business, with no deductions for expenses)

should be investigated further. After carefully considering the various issues,

the Government has decided not to take this suggestion forward."

I can see what they're getting at - at the moment if I'm 80% through a £10K project at the end of the year, that has to be treated as £8K of income in the accounts. OK, next year I'll be paid £10K cash, but only £2K goes in the accounts but it's still messy. The proposal is that you add up all the money that comes in, subtract the allowable expenses, and pay tax on the rest. This only applies to UNINCORPORATED companies with turnover under £77K, so IT specialists with limited companies are stuck with the old system.

[Risky]

Limit too low

This sounds positive but the problem with limiting it to the VAT threashold is that there is yet another barrier to expansion. With our small seasonal business we would have been better stopping trading in when we hit the threshold in month 9 and not had to pay VAT out of the netx years turnover. They we get a second shop and they pull the small business rates relief.

There are serious disincentives to expanding a business in this country.