November 2020
Janet Jack’s Blog – Spending Review
The Chancellor Rishi Sunak delivered his Spending Review to the House of Commons this lunchtime. The Spending Review is a more low key event than the budget and the things that really interest us – like who will end up paying more tax and how much – aren’t part of the Spending Review. What we do know is that we
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Spending Review 2020: a summary
The UK economy will shrink 11.3% this year, the biggest decline for more than 300 years, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said in his Spending Review. He said that the total spend on Covid-19 so far has been £280 billion, stressing the health emergency is not yet over and the economic emergency had “only just begun”. He has put
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Small firms ‘getting poorer treatment by corporates in Covid’
The payment practices of big businesses during the pandemic have been revealed in a new report which calls for legislated ‘fair buyer’ 30-day payment terms, as part of a plan to support SMEs in their economic recovery. Xero’s research found that 59% of small business owners in the UK said that corporate customers increased the length of their payment terms
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HMRC issues yet another scam warning
Self assessment taxpayers should be alert to criminals claiming to be from HMRC. As the department issues thousands of SMS messages and emails as part of its annual tax return push, the Revenue is warning customers completing their returns to take care to avoid being caught out by scammers. HMRC said the fraudsters use calls, emails or texts to contact
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Personal insolvencies on the rise
Personal insolvencies increased by 60% to 11,939 in October 2020, compared with September’s figure of 7,458, according to the latest Insolvency Service data. They were also higher than October 2019’s figure of 10,030, although there’s been no corresponding increase in corporate insolvencies. There were 1,572 debt relief orders (DROs) and 1,048 bankruptcies in October 2020. The bankruptcies were made up
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Post-payment checks to begin on Eat Out to Help Out
HMRC is writing to selected Eat Out to Help Out claimants to ask them to check their claims. The scheme saw more than 84,000 food and drink establishments take part and offer a 50% discount on eligible purchases on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays during August 2020. HMRC set up a system to pay restaurants within five working days. HMRC said:
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Contactless debit card payments surge
Contactless payments by debit card reached record levels in August, accounting for 62% of all debit card transactions, according to research by UK Finance. Just under half (45%) of all credit card transactions were contactless, with the number of in August increasing 14.6% compared with the previous month. As lockdown restrictions continued to ease at that time and the government
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Friday Roundup Podcast 20th November 2020
The news from the week ending 20th November 2020 Janet Jack – CEO Sarah Palmer – COO Simon Jordan – Marketing Below are the notes from the podcast On this week’s Friday Roundup we have… Simon Recap on the Fundamentals 2 Talks about our guest on this week’s coffee morning Gareth Blair and Rob Harvey talking about AML David Pritchard talking
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Monthly deadlines now in place for CJRS claims
Companies are now able to apply for the new Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) online. The CJRS has been extended to 31 March 2021 for all parts of the UK. From 1 November, the government will pay 80% of employees’ usual wages for the hours not worked, up to a cap of £2,500 per month. This will be reviewed in
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