Carter Collins & Myer

08/10/2026

Three Things Thursdays for SME owners.

This week: one HMRC penalty, one accounting choice and one employment contract.

1. Received an HMRC penalty?
Do not assume it must simply be paid.
You can appeal where there was a genuine reasonable excuse. The normal appeal period is 30 days, so check the date on the notice before doing anything else.
Write down what happened, when it happened and when matters were put right.

2. When does income count?
Cash basis accounting is now the standard method for many sole traders and qualifying partnerships.
Broadly, income counts when the money is received and expenses when they are paid.
It is simpler, but businesses with significant stock, complicated arrangements or borrowing requirements may still benefit from traditional accounts.

3. Would your non-compete clause work?
The High Court recently rejected a six-month restriction against a former sales manager because it was much wider than reasonably necessary.
Restrictions need to reflect the employee's actual role, access and seniority.
Copying the managing director's clause into every employment contract may create consistency. It does not necessarily create protection.

That is this Thursday's three practical points for SME owners.

The fuller email goes out every Thursday with the practical checks behind each point. If you'd like it, PM me and I'll add you to the list.

07/10/2026

Another successful day filming with Rich TV.

Subjects this month include:

- When did you last look at your prices
- Changes coming to accounts for small businesses
- How to use tax losses to get back cash
- UK tax for US citizens

Busy day filming more content for a corporate customer

07/10/2026

Calling something 'staff uniform' does not make it a uniform.

Qualifying uniforms and protective clothing can generally be provided without creating a tax or National Insurance charge.

Ordinary clothing is treated differently. That may include perfectly sensible work trousers, coats or shoes that could also be worn elsewhere.

If the business buys clothing for employees, keep the invoices and record why each item is required.

The description in Xero will not settle the argument.

07/10/2026

A director came to see me with an overdrawn Director’s Loan Account of about £85,000. He knew it existed, but in his head it had accumulated gradually over several good years and would simply be cleared when the company had another good one.

Then trading deteriorated. Within twelve months the business was struggling to pay HMRC and suppliers, but the £85,000 was still sitting there. What had felt like fairly harmless drawings when the company was healthy had become £85,000 the company was owed by him personally.

That’s the awkward thing about a Director’s Loan Account. It can spend years looking like an accounting entry and then, almost overnight, start looking very much like a debt.

06/10/2026

A client asked us whether the VAT Flat Rate Scheme would save him money. His turnover was around £120,000 and, because his costs were fairly low, on the face of it the numbers looked promising.

We ran his actual figures through both methods rather than assuming “flat rate” meant “cheaper”. In his case there was a modest saving, but the bigger difference was simpler VAT accounting. For another business with the same turnover but a very different cost base, we’d have reached a completely different answer.

“Simple” and “tax efficient” occasionally end up in the same place. It’s just dangerous to assume they always do.

———————-

This is one of the practical points covered in 91 Tax Tips for Small Business Owners 2026/27. If you’d like a copy, drop me a message.

05/10/2026

Someone inherits money and decides they would rather pass it to their children.

The obvious answer is to receive it and make a gift.

That may not produce the same tax result as formally changing where the inheritance goes.

A variation completed within two years of the death can, where the conditions are met, be treated as though the deceased had left the assets that way.

The important date is not when the money arrived. It is the date of death.

02/10/2026

A client once told me his business was worth £2 million because someone had told him businesses like his sold for four times EBITDA.

He was making about £500,000, so the maths was perfectly good. The problem is that buyers don’t buy maths. They start asking where the profit came from, whether it will still be there next year, how dependent the business is on the owner, whether the debtors are actually recoverable and what they’ll find when they start digging through the accounts.

That’s what this week’s video is about. A valuation might give you a number. Turning that number into a cheque is a rather different exercise.

01/10/2026

Three Things Thursdays for SME owners.

This week there is one inheritance point, one Will point and one employer point.

1. Inherited something recently?
A variation can redirect some or all of an inheritance to another person or into a trust.
Where the conditions are met, it can be treated for tax purposes as though the deceased had left the assets that way. It normally needs completing within two years of the death.

2. Does your Letter of Wishes still describe your family?
A Will trust may leave trustees with considerable discretion.
The accompanying Letter of Wishes helps explain what you intended. If it was written fifteen years ago, it may describe children, relationships and priorities that no longer exist in quite the same form.
Find it and read it.

3. Is it really a uniform?
Qualifying uniforms and protective clothing can normally be provided without creating a tax charge. Ordinary coats, trousers and shoes are different, even if somebody mainly wears them for work. Look at what the business is buying rather than what it has been called in the bookkeeping.

That is this week's three practical points for SME owners.

The fuller email goes out every Thursday with the practical checks behind each point. If you'd like it, PM me and I'll add you to the list.

30/09/2026

Most business owners can tell me they have backups.

Far fewer have watched somebody restore one.

Choose the system your business would struggle most to lose tomorrow. It might be email, cloud accounting or the files holding your customer records.

Check that multi-factor authentication is switched on. Then establish where the backup sits and how it would be restored.

'Somebody deals with that' is not quite the disaster-recovery plan people think it is.

29/09/2026

A client asked me last week:

“Can we employ someone three days a week, then pay him as a subcontractor for different work on the other two?”

You can call the payments whatever you like. HMRC will look at the whole relationship. If it is really one employment, the “subcontract” money becomes wages, bringing PAYE, employer’s NIC, interest and potentially penalties. Putting it through CIS does not fix that.

The clean answer is usually to pay the extra work through payroll as piecework or a bonus. A genuinely separate subcontract can exist, but it needs to be genuinely separate from the outset, not made to look separate when HMRC asks about it three years later.