Yesterday, we hosted our first live webinar of 2021. Find out what we covered and how to access the recording on demand below.

Topic and agenda

During the session, our experts covered an array of topics, from the latest happenings at HMRC, to funding options for innovative SMEs, to business advice.

Tax and accounting update

In this section, Head of Tax and Accounts Jo Surley gave us a rundown of some of the key changes business owners need to be mindful of when it comes to planning their finances. In particular focusing on:

• Making Tax Digital 
  MTD continues to move forwards with more businesses being required to register from April 2022
• Social Care Levy
  The 1.25% increase will be payable by most so make provisions to cover that increase in costs in your forecasts
• Corporation Tax increases
  Increasing to 25%
• Capital Gains Tax reform
  If this does happen there’ll be less return on the sale of a business so consider whether a sale is in your future and what this change could mean

Funding options

The funding landscape remains particularly complicated when you consider how things like grants, tax reliefs and investors incentives work together. Our advice here is to speak to a professional services company or trusted advisor with knowledge and experience of funding, and tax, to make sure you’re choosing the right option for you.

The key points here include:

• Of c150,000 companies in the UK with active patents only around 2,000 are claiming Patent Box relief, with big players like Google and Amazon using it to their advantage for big savings
• Patents are easier than some people think to get so speak to a patent attorney if you have something that you could get one on
• It is possible to utilise grants, R&D tax relief, investors and Patent Box in one company but you have to be very careful to look at the wording of grant applications and seek advice before agreeing or applying for any of these – wrong decisions can be expensive
• Innovate UK have many grant funding opportunities open to businesses, some designed to advance the Industrial Strategy and the Grand Challenges, others for different ideas
• Networks are an important source of advice when it comes to funding, incentives and investment, so join trade bodies, organisations, and any other networks you can

While advice obviously needs to be specific to the business in question, our team covered a few places that business owners struggling to move forwards could focus on, including:

• Cash in the bank
  Businesses fail because they run out of money. Focus on building and retaining strong cash reserves as a priority
• Planning
  Business owners must take regular time out of the day to day to focus on business planning, reviewing and forecasting. Doing this will allow for the sight of problems early, mean small pivots are possible more quickly
• Understanding your value chain
  If you know every step of creating a product or delivering a service and how much it costs at each point, you’ll be unlikely to make rash decisions and will be able to transform processes and efficiencies more quickly

If you’d like to view the webinar in full, you can do so by filling in this form for free access now.

Further reading