David Porthouse & Co

Carlisle Accountants

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81 Larch Drive, Carlisle CA3 9FJ

CIS Returns to 5 January 2019

 
Construction Industry Scheme returns for the month from 6 December 2018 to 5 January 2019 should be submitted online by 19 January. This includes NIL returns.

It is only too easy to get caught out by the need to submit a NIL return when no payments to subcontractors have been made. If you engage a local accountant to do your CIS returns, then this will be taken care of. In our case we keep a diary and do a batch of work at about the same time each month. We aim to be the Carlisle accountants that businesses will turn to for a range of advice and services. Our payroll files are bright yellow so they are hard to overlook, and CIS files also have a green line around them so they are easy to pick out.

Get a UTR at Once !

 
If you need to file a tax return for the year ended 5 April 2018, and you have done nothing yet, then the first thing you will need is a Unique Taxpayer Reference. This is a 10-digit number in a format like 12345 67890 and you need to apply for one. It is not the same as your National Insurance Number.

Any accountant can apply for a UTR for you, so see an accountant at once !

A Company which has missed the 31 December 2018 Deadline

 
If your company had a deadline of 31 December 2018 for the submission of its accounts to Companies House, and this deadline has been missed, then you still have something to play for, and you should contact Carlisle accountants such as David Porthouse and Co at once. You will incur a penalty of £150, but this penalty rises to £375 after 31 January 2019 if you still haven’t submitted your accounts. These penalties are £300 and £750 if you miss the deadline two years’ running. We can readily prepare and submit your accounts within the month if you contact us straight away.

Just stating the obvious, if you miss a deadline and incur a penalty, you still have the obligation of preparing and submitting accounts. That doesn’t go away and your penalty is just extra money you will need to pay.

Technological Clarity

 
It is now becoming obvious what sort of technology we need. If client-provided information is in the form of bank statements in the usual format, then we will scan them in using optical character recognition. For certain minor banks, the narrative will be in some funny format which is too awkward to scan, so we will use our narrative prediction system instead. It’s full OCR for all the high street banks and some minor banks, and an OCR/NP hybrid for all other minor banks.

We consider that NP based upon repetitive narrative is superior to OCR, but NP based upon statistics is inferior to OCR, and we will develop a hybrid OCR/NP system which reflects this. Weak NP will be able to overwrite OCR only when there is some degree of correlation.

Bank statements in unusual formats, credit card statements, other printed matter and all handwritten records will be typed in by the column. We’ve replaced our numeric keypads with the best models according to Amazon, and we will encourage the clerk to type in numbers from paper records without looking at the screen. We will make it very easy to go back and correct mistakes after the end of each statement when the checking is done.

The two commonest mistakes are missing the decimal point and missing the minus sign to indicate income (the clerk normally works in debit-positive convention). The clerk can move the cursor back to the error, and will have a choice of typing in codes from the keypad like *00 and *+, or of clicking on buttons on an onscreen toolpad which are also labelled *00 and *+ with reminders alongside of what these codes do.

If the clerk types in *** from the numeric keypad, then it will be possible to cycle around from numbers to dates to narratives and back to numbers. There will also be onscreen buttons with *** to click on as an alternative. This “triple star” system might look a little gimmicky, but it should give the clerk a feeling of being in control and of having decent technology when OCR cannot be used.

Last Post for First Class Letters in the UK 2018

 
The last posting date for first class letters in the UK which are intended to get there before Christmas is Thursday December 20th. Perhaps extra time should be allowed for letters sent to the Isles of Scilly or the Hebrides.

We keep ourselves aware of collection times from all our nearest post boxes. Our nearest box actually has a morning collection time and we post there at night if we have missed the 5 pm collection time from the box at the nearest supermarket.

Employer Payment Summary by 19 December 2018

 
It can happen sometimes that when you are an employer, you have not actually made any wage or salary payments for a PAYE month such as the month from 6 November to 5 December 2018. In that case you must submit electronically an Employer Payment Summary as a NIL return by 19 December. This is too easy to overlook.

If you engage a local accountant and business advisor or a payroll bureau to do your wages, then this will be taken care of. In our case we keep a diary and do a batch of payrolls at about the same time each month. Our payroll files are bright yellow like the old P30BC booklet so we do not overlook them. We colour-code all the taxes so green is VAT, red is income tax, blue is corporation tax and yellow is PAYE.

Last Post for Second Class Letters in the UK 2018

 
The last posting date for second class letters in the UK which are intended to get there before Christmas is Tuesday December 18th. Perhaps extra time should be allowed for letters sent to the Isles of Scilly or the Hebrides, or send them first class.

If there are a lot of letters to post, then second class sent early is more reliable than first class sent at the last minute.

CIS Returns to 5 December 2018

 
Construction Industry Scheme returns for the month from 6 November to 5 December 2018 should be submitted online by 19 December. This includes NIL returns.

It is only too easy to get caught out by the need to submit a NIL return when no payments to subcontractors have been made. If you engage a local accountant to do your CIS returns, then this will be taken care of. In our case we keep a diary and do a batch of work at about the same time each month. We aim to be the Carlisle accountants that businesses will turn to for a range of advice and services. Our payroll files are bright yellow so they are hard to overlook, and CIS files also have a green line around them so they are easy to pick out.