One way to promote your business is to send a letter to everybody telling them what you do. The current cost of a second class stamp is 55 pence, which isn’t cheap, but it could be a good investment.

 
From 1 April 2016 employees over the age of 25 will legally need to be paid at least £7.20 per hour. This is the new National Living Wage, but it is really just another band to add to the National Minimum Wage system.

 
Normal business activity resumes on 4 January 2016. We are now open again after Christmas. May we wish you a prosperous New Year.

 
Sometimes when you are an employer, you might have happened to have made no wage or salary payments at all for a PAYE month such as the month from August 6 to September 5 2015, in which case you must submit electronically an Employer Payment Summary as a NIL return by August 19. This is too easy to overlook.

 
If you buy goods and sell them on eBay, then you are engaged in a trade and need to register with HM Revenue & Customs and to prepare accounts. You need to do the same if you set up a shop on eBay.

If you merely inherit some goods, or are merely clearing out your attic or garage, and you sell them on eBay as a one-off, then there is no trade, but you may need to report a capital gain on substantial items on your annual tax return.

We are able to prepare accounts for eBay sellers. We can process eBay Trader CSV files electronically, and we will give you a 25% discount if you supply sales information in CSV format.

 
We are pleased to offer accountancy and tax return services to businesses in Wetheral. We have an instant online quotation system where you can type in the details of your business without needing to give your name and address. This system is unique to us at the time of writing, and we support it with new and advanced technology. We are based in Stanwix and offer a free initial consultation.

 
We are pleased to offer accountancy and tax return services to businesses in Houghton, near Carlisle in Cumbria. We have an instant online quotation system where you can type in your business details without needing to give your name and address. This system is unique to us at the time of writing, and we support it with new and advanced technology. We are based in Stanwix and offer a free initial consultation.

 
has started writing to employers who only employ one or two people to tell them about Automatic Enrolment. The letter obviously got the address from HM Revenue & Customs PAYE Department, but it fails to explain this. This is discourteous in any normal perception. No doubt there is some law which entitles the Pensions Regulator to get hold of this information, but ordinary good manners warrant disclosure of how a name and address was obtained regardless.

 
One way for a business to go looking for sales is simply to write to every prospective customer and tell them what’s on offer. The cost of a second class stamp is 54p, so notionally we would be spending about that much per prospective customer in order to advertise. Although this may look expensive, it is money which we can spend as we go, or stop spending if we get a rush of orders. A little bit of “direct mailing”, at least, is something for every business to consider.

 
A Japanese electronics company has admitted to overstating its profit for six years in a row. It is intriguing to know how this was done. If you make a profit, then ultimately there is more money in the kitty, and the laws of arithmetic are just the same for large businesses as for small businesses. If you overstate profit for six years, then we would expect to find a lot more money in the kitty. This phantom kitty on the balance sheet is surely going to be asked about as it grows ever larger. Large British businesses have auditors, who are professional accountants, who would check that this kitty really exists. Sooner or later, it will be noticed in Japan as well.