Companies’ House Downtime

I am seeing the following message on Companies’ House website more and more:

Companies' House Downtime Message

Let’s hope things improve when the new penalty regime comes in.

New Filing Penalties at Companies’ House

New filing penalties are coming from 01 February 2008 for late filed accounts at Companies’ House.

Of course this won’t affect most companies, but for those filing late, the penalties will stack up fast.

How late are the accounts delivered	Penalty – Private Company	Penalty – PLC
Not more than one month	£ 150	£750
More than one month but not more than three months	£375	£1500
More than three months but not more than six months	£750	£3000
More than six months	£1500	£7500

In addition where there was a failure to comply with filing requirements in relation to the previous financial year (and that the previous financial year had begun on or after 6th April 2008), the penalty will be double that shown in the table.

When do these new penalties apply?
The new penalties will apply from 1st February 2009.

How will I know when a penalty is levied?
If accounts are delivered late, an invoice is issued automatically to your registered office address.

Do the penalties apply to flat management and dormant companies?
Yes

No more prepaid tax payment envelopes

Today at the office, we had our first addressed envelopes from HMRC which were not prepaid.

HMRC have removed the prepaid postage from their envelopes

HMRC made the announcement recently that from 01 October 2008 they would phase out prepaid envelopes for sending tax payments in order to encourage electronic forms of payment which are obviously cheaper to process and more secure.

Fortunately for business there was some good news in the notification:

If businesses still wish to submit returns and cheques in hard copy, the postage is tax deductible.

Great!

Typeable 64-8

Unfortunately HMRC does not provide a 64-8 that you can type on (warning: PDF file), which means that if you want to email a client with a 64-8 to sign, you have to print, fill in by hand and scan and email.

This is unsatisfactory from a professional and aesthetic point of view.

If you have the paid upgrade of Adobe Reader or some other PDF software then you can use the typewriter tool to type on the form. However its a lot of money for one purpose.

Fortunately I have created a PDF of the form with fields to fill in by using PDF Escape.

Here is the Typeable 64-8 for your use (at least until HMRC changes the layout again).

(Remember that it is probably still easier to use the form rather than the on-line authentication if you are being authorised for more than one category: CT, VAT, PAYE etc.)

Time wasting accountants

Taxation points out some YouGov research on time wasted time by accountants looking for missing files.

It reckons that 83% of the UK’s 270,000 chartered accountants (that’s 224,100 of you) chuck away up to one hour every day looking for misfiled and mislaid paperwork, at an average cost of £88 in lost fees.

An hour a day seems pretty excessive, although every now and again a concerted effort is needed to find some paperwork. Usually however, it is in a partners car…

Roll on the paperless office.

Racist clients

I saw an interesting post recently on the question of what to do when clients make offensive comments and in particular racist ones. It is not as if you are in a senior-junior relationship with them like mother-child, teacher-pupil. If you say nothing it is like you are condoning the attitude, but will challenging them have positive benefits?

When I was a trainee, a bookkeeper was talking about her son with myself and and someone else and she said that when he came back from his trip he was ‘the same colour as a wog’. It think the shocked look on our faces showed that it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate turn of phrase.

Searching the ICAEW website

Anyone who had used the search function on the ICAEW’s website knows how unlikely it is that you will find what you were looking for. So it was no surprise that several of the comments on Dennis Howlett’s blog entry on ICAEW On-line (ION) were in reference to this, even though it is built on a different system.

Interestingly Dennis had this to say about the state of ICAEW search:

[I]t’s fair to say the people who need to know about this at Moorgate Place are keenly aware of the issues and much thought is going into how this can be properly resolved.

So perhaps we shouldn’t give up just yet…

Wanted: Northern Rock Valuer

On the HM Treasury website there is a job advert for a valuer for Northern Rock.

The Treasury invites applications for the position of independent valuer to assess any compensation that may be payable as a result of the transfer of shares in Northern Rock plc to the Treasury earlier this year.

The sixteen page PDF appointment document is quite interesting as it describes in detail the circumstances and the mechanism by which the shares in Northern Rock were acquired.

Anyone wanting to get involved should be aware the closing date is 4 July 2008.

I’m dead

Damien Wild reports on accountancy bloggers in the UK, kindly mentioning this blog.

However, in Dennis Howlett’s analysis, he notes that this blog had not been updated since December 2007, pronouncing it ‘dead’.

I think my wife, son and newly born daughter might have something to say about that, where do these guys find the time to post so often?

Cruel world of accountancy

MYOB, the accountancy software company have commissioned an author to write a novel:

Welcome to Accrual World, a place where accountants have been banned and are forced to go underground to help impoverished businesses survive the resulting chaos.

There is a related blog, which I assume is to be used for feedback as the project develops. It is certainly more imaginative of MYOB than many software companies maybe it will end up creating a lasting literary legacy for accountants?

You can read the first chapter here. Although, like me, you might have to rename the download and add ‘.pdf’ to the filename to make it open correctly. Now I am off to read it…

Found via Accountancy Age Magazine (no on-line version) Update: there is an online version now.