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Businesses + SMEs

Our support to you can cover more than just the necessary compliance services. We can offer a range business support services at any time in the life cycle of your business. Some examples of where we can help you:

• Choosing the best way to set up the business.
• Business planning.
• Help with raising finance – preparing cash flow forecasts etc.
• Regular financial/management information.
• Advice on systems.
• Valuing your business.
• Due diligence for investors – whether you are buying another business or selling yours.

If you have a business related question pick up the phone and give us a call and we will see how we can help or point you in the direction of another professional you would be better placed to provide advice or assistance.

If you are about to start up a new business, there’s so much to think about and that’s just to get you to a position to sell your goods and services!

There are several ways in which to operate your business, we can guide you through the different options to help you decide which is most suitable for you:

• Sole trade – simplest form of business, owned just by you, least amount of compliance required and tax is calculated on the profit you make in the tax year. The downside is that there is no limit on your liability for the debts of the business. You have to pay income tax and class 4 national insurance on the profits and class 2 national insurance.
• Partnership – if it is not just you who owns the business then you can work through a partnership. At the end of the year, you decide how to share the profits between the partners. It is important to be aware that the partners are liable for all of the liabilities, so if your partner cannot pay their share, you could be liable for them all. Although each partner pays their own tax and national insurance.
• Limited company – it is a separate legal entity and as the name suggested there is a limit to the liabilities. There are separate laws that apply to companies which tends to make them a more expensive way to operate your business. The most common form of company is one with share capital. These shares help to identify who owns the company, there can be many shareholders with differing numbers of shares held. Ultimately if one person owns more than 50% of the shares, they will have control of the company. A company also needs at least one director who manages the day to day running of the company. Often shareholders and directors are the same people. The company pays Corporation Tax on its profits each year. The profit after tax can be paid out as Dividends to the shareholders, with the amount paid out to each shareholder determined by the percentage of the shares they own. Dividends can be very tax efficient as there is no national insurance payable on dividends and currently £2,000 received by an individual is tax free each year. A company structure is usually tax efficient for the owners.
• Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) – as the name suggests it is in the form of partnership yet the liability of each partner is limited. Whilst this is an advantage over the normal partnership it can also have additional costs associated with complexities of the legal form similar to a company without the potential tax savings.

The limited company is the most common way of operating a company, so long as the profits are high enough to ensure the tax savings outweigh the additional costs associated with operating a company.

Companies are quick and easy to set up. The key points are:

• The company name cannot be the same or “like” another company already registered.
• You need to decide who are going to be shareholders (there needs to be at least one).
• You need to decide who are going to be directors (there needs to be at least one and it can be the same person as the shareholder).
• The company needs to have a Registered Office, a place where documents can be delivered addressed to the company. This address is on public record for anyone to search for, so if you are going to operate from home, you might not want to use that address. If you have a separate business address that would do fine. We do offer the service of using our address as your registered office.

Once the application to form the company has been made, it can take as little as a few hours for the company to be formed. As a separate legal entity, you will then need to open a bank account in the company name and all transactions of the company need to go through that account.