Monday 6 April 2020

General update – Happy New Tax Year 2020/21.

So today is the beginning of a new year for tax purposes.  The landscape of the year ahead has certainly been altered for everyone.

At this point in the country’s economic progress we should have been looking forward with positivity with a New Government, a new year, Brexit out of the headlines and a March Budget setting the tone for the economy (we predict another later this year).  Then everything changed almost overnight.

We can only wait to see how long this health and economic crisis lasts.  The shape of businesses, taxes, our personal outlooks, in all matters, have been re-shaped.  Not necessarily how we had hoped.  We will potentially have to deal with personal challenges, and I would always suggest that we don’t try face these alone.

In the past few weeks we have been receiving many calls and emails in response to our updates and we do hope that this continues.

We are here to help and, at present remain fully functioning.

The contact that has been made is predominantly around furloughing and we are keeping abreast of the situation daily and will be here ready to make claims for clients that want us to assist when the process is up and running.  Please remember that we are working remotely, and responses can be a little slower than normal.  We will also have to deal with the likely breakdown of the system when everyone tries to access it in the coming weeks.

The second group of popular calls is around the loan scheme and financial support.  I do not have any happy experience on this so far and I can see a need for intervention from Government or The Bank of England to get the money out to businesses that need it now.  The whole process seems to be based on the bank’s lending criteria applied through the last 12 years or so, which has been tough to say the least.

At Mostons we will be ready to help businesses present their accounts, forecast and assumptions along with robust arguments for support to be made available.