Hello everyone, and welcome to the Pat Canton Podcast with me, your host, Vicky Clark.

I'm going to help you get to grips with your finances, save you lots of money and take the stress out of doing your tax return.

So let's get going.

Welcome everyone to this week's live, which is going to be on the budget.

We have both worn black because I feel like it needs to be black.

The absolute horrific budget that was laid out yesterday.

It was a thrilling watch watching her blabber on for 20 minutes before she actually got to the point in the first place.

But there's been quite a few changes come about.

One major one obviously is going to be if you're employing people, the rest of it pretty tame.

In fairness, it's only screwed you really, if you're an employer, which we are.

So happy days for us.

So I'm gonna get Lee to go through the employee employer stuff because he's better, he's better at that than I am.

One thing that I will mention that's come out of it just before we go into that, because that's going to be the main bulk of what we talk about is a couple of things.

HMRC are going to be cracking down on late payments.

So that was one thing that did come out is that they are going to plow lots of money into HMRC and collect the money that is owed to them.

So if you are a late payer or you have outstanding bills, you need to get those paid because they are going to crack down on that.

It's not just a crackdown as well.

It actually increase the rate at which they're charging interest on the overdue payments as well.

So it's, it's really going to start to hit people.

They want it back, basically.

Yeah, they want the money back so.

They'Re going to hit you even harder.

So again, that ties into, you know, looking after your money and making sure you're putting enough tax aside to pay that tax bill.

Now you can do two things to make that happen.

One, get your tax return done as soon as the tax year ends in April.

That will also help because it'll give you more time to save for your tax bill.

And secondly, buy our tax calculator.

Then you can't go wrong because it tells you how much tax to save.

So if you do it early and get the tax calculator, then happy days.

You won't fall foul of being late or not having enough time to pay taxable and getting spanked with interest.

So two tips for that, get it done.

Early in April, buy the tax calculator so you know how much tax you're going to be paying when the time comes.

And don't file a tax return late because again, the penalties, again, it's going to all add up.

Yeah, exactly.

So there's my two top tips so far.

Get it done in April, buy the tax calculator.

Yeah, I mean the tax calculator is absolutely brilliant.

And if you use that correctly and you stick to it, you can use it to grow your business, but also to plan for your tax as well.

It literally spells out for you what your current expenses are, where it is that you want to be at the end of the tax year, how much money you want to take home, what you need to charge per dog, per hour on average.

And as long as you're charging that out and your expenses are in line with what you've said that they are, then you will take home what you've said that you wanted to take home.

And it calculates the tax view based on that take home as well.

So that allows you to save every week, every month, every time you get paid from your clients.

Start utilizing pots.

I mean, this is going to come onto a little bit.

What we're going to talk about later on anyway is with regards to your cash flows and understanding where your money is disappearing to so that you can really understand your business and why you haven't got any money left over at the end of the month.

Because a lot of the clients that we speak to, certainly the ones that go VAT registered, is that destroyed my business.

VAT didn't destroy your business.

Poor cash management destroyed your business.

So it's about understanding what you need to change yourself, change your behaviors, change the way that you save the money.

And that will really, really help you protect yourself from having to pay the VAT every quarter.

And some of that's going to come into play now as well with the budget that we've seen with regards to the employer's side.

But again, we'll get into that.

That I was going to say something.

One of the other changes that HMRC has announced yesterday, which was one of the big ones, was that they're putting a task force together to tackle those that took bounce back loans and have maybe misappropriated the funds.

So they're going to look to recoup some of that money.

And it wasn't just the loans.

I mean, we obviously had support as well for the self employed where money was given out to help these people through that time.

And what HMRC will now do is they're going to look at whether or not you were entitled to the money.

Were you entitled to as much as you had and how much of that do you need to pay back?

And this specific task force is going to start looking at those.

So again, what we'd expected to see over the next couple of years is a lot of people hammered for the repayment of funds that they've, they've acquired in some cases league dishonestly.

Yeah.

You know, and, and, and when we have the ones with the directors of limited companies where they've taken bounce back loans, you know, were they, were they honest about their profits and what did they do with those funds?

Did they go out and buy that Porsche that they were after?

Imagine having a job hmosing task force.

Yeah.

The most hated person in Britain.

Yeah.

I mean it's, this budget wasn't all doom and gloom, you know, so we're not going to sit here and we're not going to think, oh my God, you know, everybody's gonna get hammered.

It wasn't as bad as I thought.

It was going to be.

In fairness, it could have been.

It is bad, but it wasn't as bad.

They just, yeah, they've sort of made it sound like they're helping people, but.

They'Re not really, they're not.

So we understand it.

You're never gonna know that.

Just one thing before we get into the nitty gritty and something else that came up is making Tax Digital Update.

Now they haven't said they're getting rid of it, unfortunately, so it is still full steam ahead.

So make a Tax Digital.

If no one knows it basically means everything has to be done on some sort of software from April 2026, which is only 500 days away.

So we are not far from it.

So if you're on paper, if you're on a spreadsheet that is no longer going to exist.

So from April 2026, if you have a turnover of 50 grand or more.

You will have turnover, not profit.

That's the sales that you generate of £50,000.

You will then have to go and register for making Tax Digital, which means you'll have to be on some sort of software and you'll have to do four mini tax returns a year before we get to the main tax return.

We will go into this more detail later the time.

If, when you get to 2027 it's going to be if your turnover is £30,000 or more, you will then have to do it and then what They've just said in this budget is there's a new bracket which we didn't think we were going to get.

At some point after that I'm going to assume 2028 of 20,000 pound or more.

So you've got a bit of leeway if you're in that bracket.

But it is coming.

We thought they might just keep it as 30 grand or more and then anyone under that doesn't have to do it and you can do it as we do it now.

But they have brought in another bracket of 20 grand or more.

So you haven't escaped.

If you're under 20 grand, happy days.

You don't need to worry about it.

So 50 grand from 2026, 30 grand from 2027 and I'd imagine 20 grand from 2028 if all goes well the previous two years.

I think I'm just going to jump in there with me and Vicky is obviously aware of what's going to be happening with making tax digital.

So one of the things that we've already started looking at is what software is available for our clients that, that can remove the necessity of paper based records that's easy to use, that, that we can roll out across the board.

And I think we've, we've in win talks with somebody at the moment and basically for a fiver a month we're able to give you a software that you can have either on your phone that you can take a photograph of the receipt, you can connect your live bank feed to it and you basically it will pay snap with both of them.

So rather than having to keep a paper based spreadsheet or having to fill a book that's in, you literally connect your main bank account, you take photographs of your expenses.

It's a little bit like Hub Doc that we spoke about in the past where you can send it an email with the attachment on as well and then you can go on, you just hit match with all of the ones that it matches off and then you can just categorize all of the business transactions.

It's much, much simpler than free agent.

It's, it doesn't have all of the complexities with free agent.

So you know, and when we talk about which softwares are best we usually say free agents is what it does, what it says on the tin, it's relatively straightforward to use and it's for simple accounting.

So this, it's, you know, this software strips all of that out.

Again I know some people get free agent for free.

Whether that'll still be the case when this goes digital, I don't know.

I did ask someone in Free Agent whether they were going to start charging and they didn't answer me, so.

And they gave me a bit of a politician's answer, which means they're probably going to start charging for it.

And the thing is, Free Agent might be free, but think of the timer it's taking you to get your records done on Free Agent.

So you have to factor that in of how much time are you spending on the software.

So what we're trying to do is prepare a software that is, that will be making Tax Digital ready so that if you do fall into one of those brackets, then, yes, it will involve a little bit more work for us.

And we're not going to hide the fact that when Making Tax Digital arrives, accountancy fees across the UK from every single accountancy firm is going to go up.

And that's purely and simply because we're no longer having to do this one big tax bit at the end.

You know, that happens anywhere between nine months after the year end date.

We're having to do four submissions a year, almost like that.

Submissions, yeah.

And the amount of time that's involved in those will increase dramatically.

We have got more information of what would be included in those submissions, but again, it's now looking at how clients keep their records and can we start moving in that direction so that when we get to 2026, everybody's not like, oh my God, now I need to make the move.

It's about preparing you, getting used to the software, knowing what you're doing, making life much, much easier.

So if you are a client or if you're not a client, unfortunately, if you're not a client, we can't offer you this software.

This is something specific to us because it's a, it's a background area that we have to log into.

But if you are a client and you want to get off paper, you want to get off spreadsheets and you'd like to have a very, very simple, easy to use system reach out to us, it's a fiver, it ain't going to break the bank, basically, to find.

We know that people don't like using technology, we understand that even free agents 0 are quite hard and time consuming to do and 9 times out of 10 people get it wrong anyway, which is no disrespect to you guys, you're not accountants, you're not expected to get it right.

So rather than trying to get everyone onto Free Agent, where you could potentially get things wrong and it makes things more complex and more time consuming.

We're trying to find a system that makes it as easy for you and as cheap as we can get it.

We don't want to be putting our hike and our prices up loads.

But like Lee said across the board accountancy fees are going to go up because we're having to do things four times a year instead of once a year.

And within those quarterly returns it is kind of like we haven't had like concrete this is what it's going to be.

But we've had some sort of guidance as basically, is there going to be many tax returns that you've got to submit every.

Every quarter?

We will be doing them as Sarah's put on there.

Will we be completing them?

We will.

There'll be different packages available once we put them together, once we find out more information because again, it's hard to.

If someone says, well, how much are you going to charge?

It's quite hard at the minute because a, we're trying to find a software that's going to work and be cheap enough for you guys to have.

And also we haven't got all the information to be able to put a package together because we haven't been told what we need to do yet.

So all we can say is it is unfortunately going to go up in 2026.

But what we're going to try and do is put some sort of package together for next year that is going to help get you on board and get you started.

But as soon as we we put that together, we'll let you know.

But obviously, as a client, if you want us to do the quarterly returns, we will be Rachel's put with software mean you can't use ones with from Starling Bank.

The thing you get with Starling I think is like a tools thing.

It has to be MTD compliant and a lot of these banks that have these little toolkits I don't think will be MTD compliant.

If you Google it, they'll give you a list at the minute of who's MTD compliant.

It doesn't mean you have to switch banks, it just means that you might have to get another.

Yeah.

Another subscription service, which is what we're trying to look at as the cheapest option so far.

The one we found that we're looking into is like five a month.

So fingers crossed it's not going to break the bank on that one, but it's just something to be mindful of.

We are obviously going to go through this in more detail, nearer the time.

So when we get more information, we'll do lives on solely making Tax digital and what it is that you need to do.

But you will so seek your family.

I know it's a nightmare, but as we get more information, we will relay that to you and go through it a bit more detail.

But you have, especially if you're on the 50 grand mark, then obviously that's coming closer than everybody else.

So if you are on 50 grand or more, it's something that we need to start looking into.

And as your accountant, if we are, then we're looking into that now to try and get things in place so that it's a smooth transition.

But.

But, yeah, that's just something that's come out.

They're not scrapping it.

I didn't think they would, but they haven't included the 20 grand bracket.

So, just to be fair, I think following this budget and considering the amount that she's now taxing people and businesses, it would not surprise me if we see a bigger push towards the making Tax digital because it means that the Chancellor can recoup as much of the money as possible and the MTD submissions will give her an indication of what sort of money they can be expecting.

And if you do, like three submissions and then your fourth one is your self assessment and your self assessment is massively different than the previous three that you've done.

That could be one of HMRC's red flags that says, hang on a second, we were expecting a little bit more money for you.

Let's have a little closer look at your records.

Then you'll have task force on your door.

Task force, yes.

Banging it down.

But again, this is just assumptions at the moment, but it, it's quite clear which direction that they're going to be looking at following the.

That the task force that are being put together, they want their money and they.

They want it now.

Another thing that came out, I'm just going to go through the brief ones and we'll let Lee go into the nitty gritty of if you're an employer.

But one thing that did come out is that the income, the personal tax threshold of the 12, 5, 70 is staying the same until 2028, which means they might put it at 100 pound in 2028.

But basically your personal tax threshold of 12,570 is going to stay the same until 2028.

2020.

And the reason that is.

Yeah, because they put your wages up.

Yes.

And this ties into the national Minimum wage thing as well.

So because they don't change your tax free thresholds, it means that if you're nearing the 40% bracket, you're going to reach that quicker because if your wages goes up, you're going to go over it sooner because your wages are rising in line with inflation.

But the tax bands aren't changing, so it pushes more people into a higher tax ban.

So they pay taxes on their earnings, whereas if they, if they'd raise the bands in line with inflation, then that person may have stayed below the taxation threshold and that could well be the same for somebody on low income as well.

At the 12:70 mark, you're going to be pushed over that band.

Now that's where this national minimum wage comes in.

They're like, oh, wager.

But they haven't increased the personal tax thresholds.

All you're going to be doing if someone who was on 11, £40, whatever, now it's going to be on 12£21, they're just going to be paying tax, whereas before they wouldn't pay tax.

So it's.

Yeah.

So the way that this has worked is that across the board, national minimum wage has been increased for everybody.

So as a sole trader, you dictate your own prices anyway and you should be charging more than the national minimum wage.

So in broad terms, sole traders have generally been left alone and their taxes won't change unless you start earning more and you go across one of the taxation thresholds.

If you have a employee, then unfortunately you've been hammered.

Now, I say that with a little bit of a pinch of salt, because it also depends on whether or not how many employees you have, what you pay them, and whether or not you're able to claim HMRC's employer's allowance.

So what's happened?

First of all, the national minimum wage has gone up from 11 pound 44 to 12 pounds 21, which is a run about 6% increase.

I think it was 7.6.7.

So that means that any member of staff that you have, whether they're salaried, zero hours or hourly paid, they must earn the national minimum wage for their age group.

So you have to do a calculation to make sure that that person that you've got, certainly if they're on salary, that the number of hours that they do within the year gives them the equivalent of at least the national minimum wage for their age.

The biggest thing that come out of this national minimum wage increase is from 18 to 21 year olds, it's a 16.3% increase.

Sorry, 18 to 20 year olds.

Oh, sorry, 18 to 20.

Is it 18 to 20?

18 to 21.

And then 21 is national wage.

Oh no, you're right, yeah.

18 to 20.

Yes, because they included the 21 year old as the new previous one which was 22.

So apologies.

That says.

So 18 to 20 year olds has, has gone up by 16.3%.

The new national minimum wage for anybody within that age group is now 10 pounds per hour.

So somebody working 40 hours a week must receive 400 pounds a week as a minimum.

Now when you do these calculations, if you've got an apprentice, if they're below the age of 19, you can pay them at the national minimum wage for an apprentice, which is £7.

Sorry, I know I got a few books.

That's a few pages of this written down and I didn't write that one down.

Dick, can you just double check that while I'm talking, please?

So we're just double checking what the apprentice wage is going up to, but you have to make sure that.

So if that apprentice is below the age of 19, you can pay them at this rate.

If they're over the age of 19 and they've been on the apprenticeship for one year on their one year anniversary, the next payday following that anniversary, they must be paid the national minimum wage for their age.

So if you've got a slightly older apprentice who could be 18 to 35 or 40, then once they've been with yourselves 12 months on that apprentice, they then go to the national wage for their age group which could be as high as 12 pound 21 an hour.

So the apprentice wage currently 6 pound 40 and it's gone up to 7 pound 55.

755.

And that's the same for under 18s.

And then obviously 18 to 20 goes up to 10.

So 755 on 40 hours a week is 302 pounds a week.

We times that by 52.

So they should now be on a minimum of 15,704 pounds a year.

Okay.

Now what you also have to ensure that you do is that some people put apprenticeship on a salary or they class it.

We just pay them equally every month.

You have to be careful that in the months where there are five weeks and not four weeks that they are receiving at least the amount of hours that they have worked in that month.

Even though if you're trying to spread it over evenly over 12 months.

So some months that apprentice should receive more money than they do in the, the months with is four weeks.

So what we recommend is that you actually pay them for the number of working days within a month, so that you're always paying them at least the national minimum wage.

If you pay them below the number of days that they've worked during the month, you've broken employment law and they can take you to tribunal because you didn't pay at least the national minimum wage during that period.

Okay?

So it's really, really important you've got.

Payable yourself that, if you are wondering or struggling with it, is to get someone to do that for you relatively cheap to get another accountant to do it if you're not sure, because otherwise you get yourself under hot waters.

There is a way that you can pay a salary and do it over 12 equal payments, but please speak to a HR professional to get your contract drawn up, because if the wording is incorrect, if you've used the wrong terminology in a period or what the pay is based over, then you would breach employment law and you would underpay your employee.

And HMRC will come back to you and ask for you to pay the employee and they won't go, well, you overpaid them in the last two months.

They will say, no, we're ignoring those two periods and we're looking at the ones where you did underpay them and those are the ones that you now need to back back pay that employee.

So this is kind of like a little warning to yourselves that when we get to April, there are going to be changes if you've got an employee based on their wages alone, because there are certain checks you need to do to make sure that that employee is being paid the correct amount in every single pay period.

A lot of people say, well, you know, I let them go a little bit early and then, you know, they stay a little bit late the day after.

You should be recording every single hour.

And if it is flexi time, you need to understand that if they worked over in the month, you need to pay them over in the month and pay them for what they've worked.

It's not worth accidentally breaching employment law when it comes to the apprentice, because acas will uphold the tribunal and you will be fined.

HMRC can find you then there's rerunning of payroll costs involved as well.

Certainly if you're unsure of how to do it yourself.

So a lot can go wrong if the.

If the person is not paid properly.

So that's how the national minimum wage is going to affect employers from one aspect.

The next aspect is hmr.

As an employer, you have to make certain contributions, what's called Class 1A National Insurance contributions.

As an employer on top of the employee's wages at the moment, you could earn £9,100 a year before the employer has to start paying an additional 13.8% on top of their wages to HMRC every single month.

What we had in the budget Yesterday was that 9100 buffer zone that we have has been reduced.

And from now, once that employee earns £5,000, you now have to start paying the national insurance contributions from.

From the 5000.

It's from April.

It's going to be from April.

But, but I'm.

Yeah, so it's from April.

You'll be paying from the, from 5,000 pounds.

So you're going to be paying what was 13.8%.

But here's the double whammy.

She increased the percentage that you also need to pay from 13.8% to 15%.

So not only are you guys now paying more to have an employee, you're paying it sooner.

Now, there was a little bit of a buffer that she gave me this because if you are a sole trader and you've got an employee and that employee earns over that threshold, you could claim what's called employer's allowance, and that was £5,000 a year that you were able to offset your contributions for that employee every single tax year.

She said, okay, we recognize that there are some small employers out there, so we're going to give you 10,004, sorry, £10,500 that you can now use to offset the national insurance contributions.

It doesn't go as far as you would expect.

And if you have around four employees, that national insurance buffer is going to be used by just those four employees.

If you've got any more than four employees on your books, you are going to be paying more in national insurance contributions for those other employees and quite a considerable rate.

I think Martin Lewis, the money expert, worked out that a full time employee is going to cost you around about £650 more per employee per year.

To have employees, I mean, that's a phenomenal amount of money.

So it's really difficult.

I mean, we are affected by it because we have more than four employees.

If you have apprentices that are below a certain age, I think the age is 21 at the moment.

They are.

As an employer, you don't have to pay any national insurance contributions for them.

I can't see anywhere.

We had a quick look beforehand to see if that's changing and I can't see anywhere where it says that's going to change.

So again, depending on the age of the people that you have within your business, the effect will be greater than some others that don't have, that has an older workforce, for argument's sake.

So the older workforce is going to cost you a lot more money than a younger workforce.

So basically under four employees, you're fine.

You should be okay.

But it depends on their wages.

Yeah.

And obviously apprentices, you're fine.

Yes, at the moment.

Yeah.

So really?

Yeah.

So if you are an employer, you've probably been hit quite hard with this budget and, you know, depending on how you pay your in your contributions over to hmrc, some pay them monthly, some pay them quarterly.

That's going to be money that you're going to have to find each and every single month to be able to pay that over.

Now this is where this national insurance, sorry, the national minimum wage comes into play.

People are now on higher wages.

They have gone over the thresholds to pay tax and national insurance contributions.

So not only do you have to find the money to pay them their extra, you're also going to be deducting tax and national insurance from the employee to pay that over to hmrc.

So it's really important that when you are making that deduction at the end of the month that you're saving that money away because again, it's not your money because that needs to be paid over to hmrc.

And the one thing that hasn't been picked up in any of this is your employees might be entitled to pensions.

The increase in national minimum wage means that you're going to be paying more in pension contributions for an employee.

Now, you might argue that if somebody's under the age of 22, I don't have to put them in a workplace pension.

But what you do have to do is offer that employee the ability to opt in if they wish.

And if that person says yes, please, you have to contribute.

It doesn't matter about their age.

They said, I want to be enrolled.

And you now have to contribute regardless of their age.

And I think from memory, once they earn over 510 pounds a month, they then pay pension contributions on that, those earnings and so do you.

So anything over 510 pounds, you're, as an employer, you're going to start paying 3% of that into a pension for them.

Yes, they will have to pay 5% out of their wages, but they're saving for retirement.

This is now an extra 3% that you've got to find on top of the national insurance rise, the employees, the minimum wage rise.

So these are all things that are starting to add up.

And this is where I said at the beginning, your cash flows and understanding where your money's going every month and starting to utilize savings pots in the bank accounts, starting to utilize savings accounts so that you can, every time that you get money dropped into your bank account, you should be saying, right, I need to put 20% of that away into the wages pot because then by the end of the month I've got enough to pay my staff's wages.

I'm going to put 15% into another pot because that's going to be the national insurance contributions that I need to pay over to HMRC.

If you're VAT registered, you should be putting 20% of that money coming in into your VAT pot to pay HMRC of your VAT bill.

And that's quite key.

We don't see a lot of clients doing that.

And I mean, for me and Vic, it's become religion for us.

Every time that we get a bank transfer or money comes in from Go Cardless or your credit card terminals, we say, right, we know what percentage our VAT bill is of the money that we take before we distribute any of that money to anywhere else, we say, right, we've got to put X percentage in that pot for the VAT bill because when the VAT bill comes around in three months time, we wouldn't have the money sat there.

When they want X number of thousands of pounds, I mean, it would be ridiculous.

We'd be, we'd probably have like nice material things that we've got bought with the money, but we'd have a nice car and whatever, but we'd be screwed when we came to actually playing the Batman, which is why, you know, we are quite anal about it.

We've got like, I don't know how many different pots we've got now.

Probably about eight.

And you're talking like cork tax pot, that pot, wages pot, HMRC pot, rent pot, you know, bonus pot, Christmas party pot, you know, everything pot.

But every time money drops into that bank, either one of us will then distribute.

What, Even if it's 100 pound, this is how like anal we are.

We'll be like, right, 20 to that pot, 20 to that pot, 25 pound to that pot.

But they're not like guessy pots.

We know how much our wage bill generally is every month, so we know how much we need to save in that pot.

We can check how much our VAT bill is currently at to make sure that when either on it or not, far from what the VAT bill currently is.

And the same with the corp tax.

We know how much our corporation tax bill is, we know how much we need to save every month.

So this is why when we harp on about understanding the figures and know what it is that you're shelling out, that's the only way you can do it.

And like Lee said, when people call us and say, oh, you know, the VATS ruining me, I can't afford it.

You can, you're just not managing your money properly.

The vat, if you're VAT registered, the VAT money is not yours to spend.

I wish it was because our VAT bills are bloody extortionate.

But, you know, we know not to spend it and put it in the pot.

It's all about managing your money and knowing where that money needs to go and how much things are so that you can plan for it.

Otherwise it's just, you can't, you just can't.

And then you get the time, you get a bill and you like, shit, I can't do it, my business is going to fail.

And you know, and that's a benefit of having an accountant or a bookkeeper so that we can guide you through that process and say, look, this is how much this is going to be, this is what you need to do and then go away and do it.

And once you have that conversation, it's less stressful because you know exactly what you need to save every month.

That's why we created the tax calculator, because we were getting so many emails and calls of, how much do I need to put away for tax?

What do I do for tax?

We thought, well, let's just put a calculator together and then you can monitor that yourself.

And I think clients come to us and ask, well, do you not include that?

You know, can I not just ring you up and ask?

And the honest answer is that calculator has been designed to get input from you as the months change, because your desired income levels will change.

So it's there for you to tweak every single month that you want to know how much money you've got.

Because if you suddenly decide, well, you know, I'm going to take four weeks holiday, we have no way of knowing when your business is open and closed, how many dogs you groom, walk, board a day or train.

So it's really tailored to you as an individual to mold and change as your business model changes.

So you might have started the year thinking, you know what?

I'm going to do eight dogs a day and I'm going to get them in, get them out, I'm going to make a load of money.

And you might find that actually your body's not physically able to do that.

And those eight dogs have dropped down to four dogs.

Well, that's going to have a substantial, substantial, you know, impact on your earning potential.

So what you can do is you can go into that spreadsheet and you can tell it, I'm no longer doing eight dogs, I'm now doing four dogs a day.

And it will work out what your earnings for the year is going to be and what the potential tax bill will be.

But I think one of the key things that if I can say to anybody at this stage is if you have a bank account that you use for personal expenditure and for business expenditure, stop it immediately because you cannot work out how much money that you've got in that account for business purposes.

And what you've got left to start doing, you know, paying all these bits and pieces whilst it is a mess with all of this combined transactions going through, what you need to do is you need to have a dedicated account solely to your business transactions.

And if you have to pay any bills personally, you transfer that money out and you put it into your personal bank account and you use that personal bank account to, for your personal day to day spending your livings, your holidays, whatever it is.

But stop muddying the waters with your business and your personal transactions all in the same account.

We see it time and time again with clients on their self assessments where they send in bank statements to us and they're highlighting lines of what they think is business transactions.

You cannot have any idea of what income that you've got on a month by month basis and where you're spending that money on business transactions.

When it's all on one bank statement, you just, you know, there's no physical way that I can say to you, right, because we're going to group things together.

How much did you spend on computer software this month?

What did you spend on your website?

How much did you spend on buying products to resell?

What did you spend on consumables?

If you can't answer those questions, you don't understand your business and you don't know where your money's going.

So when you come to us saying I can't afford my VAT bill, my, my, my question is, is right, let's look at last month, then you tell me how much did you take in sales.

How much did it cost you to generate those sales?

How much money did it.

Did you pay on insurance?

You know, how many mobile phones have you got going through your business and how many of those mobile phones are you using?

There are these type of questions that you need to challenge yourself with to think, right, I've got an iPad going through it, I've got a data plan, I've got two mobile phones, but I only really use the one that I take everywhere.

Do I need those other things coming out of my business?

You know, with my insurance?

Did I shop around when my insurance was up for renewal?

All of us are guilty because it's easy just to say, do you know what, yeah, I'll just accept the renewal, but you're being charged an absolute fortune for it.

Shop around.

No one, no one ever goes through their personal, personal bank either.

And I said, like, probably, God, a couple of years ago now, you know, a thing that I do, and I'm guilty of not doing it recently, but what you should be doing is every six months, I used to go through my personal bank statement and I'd highlight stuff that either was like, subscription that I was no longer using, or, you know, I think, oh, shit, I shouldn't need to cancel that or highlight that.

Um, I'd highlight the color, like just bits and bobs that I was spending money on.

And then actually, when you physically look at me highlighting stuff, you're like, oh, my God, actually, I've just saved myself 50 quid a month by all the stuff that I didn't realize I had or forgot.

And if you did that with your personal and your business every six months, you probably save yourself a fortune because no one ever does it.

No one looks at it.

No one looks at bank statements anymore.

They just look at what's in, in the pot at that time.

So, you know, get six months worth of bank statements with personal and your business account, highlight what you've been spending money on, and then it'll be, you know, quite obvious, you know, if you had one color for like, treats and just shit, and then another one for all the direct debits and another one for something else, and then you can see, and you'll actually probably save yourself a lot of money because again, a lot of our clients will come to us and say, I've got no money, my business isn't working.

And actually, when we go through them with it, it's usually their personal spending that's the issue.

And they don't realize what they're spending their money on.

And once it's highlighted, you think, oh, crap, you know, maybe if I did that, that and the other, you'd save yourself 500 pound a month.

I mean, that, that's a good example.

Because even myself, I was with my other half in a week and we were like going through.

If I was moving bank accounts and I was moving all the direct debits, and I was like, aviva, what the hell have I got insured with Aviva?

It turns out that we had two lots of house insurance going out, and we just didn't realize because you don't know what the direct debit for, and you just see it going out every single month.

It just becomes pat and parcel of, oh, yeah, I've got to pay that.

But what is it?

What are you paying it for?

You know, so that was a saving.

It wasn't very much money.

But you add that up over the year and it's like 280 quid, £300.

So, you know, it's not a wasted task.

And not only that, if you do have a business bank account and you're going through your personal one to have a look at your personal expending, maybe you've got stuff going through your personal account that you're using for business as well that need to be moved over that actually you're not claiming as an expense because it's in the wrong account that you've forgotten about.

I found that the other week, actually, someone sent me their spreadsheet and their bank statements and it was a personal bank mixed in.

And I went through the spreadsheet and I thought, I'm gonna have a look through the bank statements and they'd missed off that they paid 35 quid a month for savvy.

Now, you know, some accountants might not have looked, and then that would have been overlooked because it wasn't on the spreadsheet.

But that's another 35 pound a month that was gone through.

Now that maybe wouldn't have had I not checked and the person didn't realize it was there and hadn't put it on the spreadsheet.

So it is important and just to let everyone know, we will be answering the questions.

We've had quite a few.

We will have a little pause.

But first of all, I've been pulled up by the payroll manager because the £510, I said the pension is actually 520.

So I've got that wrong today, just.

To recap, making tax digital is coming in play for 50 grand.

Turnover from 2026.

So if you are in that bracket, you will need to go on software.

If you're a client of ours, we are in the process of getting some really cheap, good software that's going to make your lives a lot easier.

If you have employees, it's going to affect you.

If you are, if you are a client of ours and you want to get your head around it and how it's going to affect you, then please just give us a ring and we will talk you through that.

And employees allowance has gone up, which will help some of you, but maybe not all of you.

And National Minute Wage has gone up to 1221 from April as well as to 10 pound for the 18 and 20 year olds.

Right, so let's go through some of these questions.

It is some more on the budget as well that we'll come back to just how it might affect people.

So we haven't finished with that, but this is the big bulk of it that does affect people.

So Fiona's asked if we have to make tax payments more frequently.

We don't know at this stage, Fiona.

They've not said whether the tax is still to be paid by 31 January or whether they're going to want you to pay the tax award in that quarter.

They haven't told us, Joe.

I'm going to make a prediction on this and I honestly believe that in future years that's the road that we're going to be going down.

And it wouldn't surprise me if they work out what we owe for the quarter and then like a VAT return, they'll give us so many days and we'll have to make that payment of that due and then, then the January comes around and we'll make a balancing payment of the difference of the ones that we've made during the year, but.

We don't know yet.

So watch this space.

Yeah, Rebecca makes a very valid point.

You know, it's like, I think everyone's whinged about, you know, the budget, saying they're helping the working people, but they're not because they're just screwing over small businesses.

But like I said, other than the employee side of things and wages, as far as small businesses concerned sole traders, nothing's really changed unless you're hiring someone.

I think if you have got employees, this is where you need to start thinking about the rate at which you charge out that employee because, you know, and adjust your prices, you know, and, and you can start telling clients that, you know, we've got Employees, we've got to raise our prices because of the additional burden that we've got.

But I also appreciate that some people feel that they're at that ceiling limit where they can't push those prices up any further because of the.

They risk the backlash.

And, and that is the difficult situation that we.

That we are in right now is that, you know, you feel that you can't put those prices up.

And how are you going to afford these extra demands on the business?

Because you might not even be able to offer the pay rises that you wanted to offer the employees.

And I think it was today, the chancellor's actually said in the news, yeah, I now understand that, that pay rises will be affected.

But she's like, you know, but we're doing it for working people.

Well, those working people would have had a pay rise had you not just, yeah, increased.

I'm not gonna have a pay rise.

I'm going to pay more tax.

Yeah, there we go from Sarah.

After reviewing the budget and taking all advice from our business obligation, the parent, I feel left.

I'm not feeling it's all about paying out very little release yet all these perks opportunities claim by any of the tax, especially in terms of business spares.

Yeah, we, you know, as a client, Sarah, you know, we'll always be looking at stuff that's going to save you money.

And, you know, again, the perks of having a bookkeeper is that they're constantly reviewing your figures.

That's again, what the performance packs for, to make sure that you don't slip behind.

But, you know, we're always reading up on things of how we can save you money in tax.

So we will always guide you on that.

So if you are a client of ours, there's no need to worry on that side of things, because anywhere we can save money, we will do.

Flis has asked about what percentage to put in the pots.

That's going to be personal, flisted personal and what money you earn.

And we can't give you a specific amount because what we might put in one pot is going to be different to what you put in a pot.

And so again, I don't know if you want to get in touch with this.

You can do.

But again, it's very hard to say what to put in what pot, because it's all individuals.

The.

I can't tell you what percentage to put in, but what I would say is that if you have large payments that need to go out every single month, create a pot for those payments.

So if.

If France sake.

Like for us, some of our software costs are eye watering and we're, and we're talking several thousands of pounds a month in software costs.

So for us, one of those pops is for the software fee that we have to pay every month.

And what we tend to work out is, you know, we have a rough idea of what we're going to bring in each month because we try to target ourselves and we look at what we made last month and we know our quiet months compared to our busier months.

So we would say, look, that needs to be maybe 10% or 5% of our, of our turnover needs to go to that pot so that when we get to that stage of the month when that bill is due, the money's in the pot ready and we can just transfer it into our main bank account to pay that bill.

And that's just good cash management because it's sat there ready to pay it rather than you getting, you know, you've got it all in the one bank account, this massive bill goes out and then for the next few days you're absolutely skinned because you've just had pay this massive bill for whatever it was and then you think, and you're dreading that coming around again next month.

So it's just about utilizing and saving and getting ready.

And it doesn't have to be long term savings.

It could be over a period of, like I said, four weeks when that bill comes round again.

But getting into the habit of actually putting that money away.

And it's also good because you know that once you've got the bigger things safer and you're just ticking away with your smaller bits pieces, the rest of that money as a sole trader is yours.

And, and again you can look at your profit and loss account, which is where it comes in of knowing your figures, the profit at the bottom of that is yours to take and that's what you've got to pay your tax on.

So if you even don't use our spreadsheet, but you do use software, you can work out what your tax will be based on the money that you've, you've done in your profit and loss.

As long as your bookkeeping is good and you're not including expenses that you're not allowed because that will have a massive impact, then you know, you can work out what your tax will be.

And what I mean by that is that you know, your general day to day clothes can't go through, your, your everyday meals can't go through.

If you're claiming 45 pence a mile don't also claim for fuel.

So it's those little things that, that might look on your business that you're making no money when in reality you're actually making a profit, but you're spending the money and claiming for things that you're not allowed.

That is more with your personal life rather than your business.

And that's where the shock tax bills comes in, because you think, well, I've made a loss because of all of these expenses.

You give it to your accountant, your accountant goes, no, you can't have that.

You can only pick either this or that.

That's not an allowable expense.

And all of a sudden this profit starts decline.

One of the big things that clients get shocked with is a first payment on account.

Yeah, that always catches everyone.

Oh, we have always.

Yeah, we have.

We'll come back here for half an hour.

I know there's been a couple of comments from Rachel and Sarah saying that they're going to sort of slow down or downsize.

I wouldn't necessarily, you know, I wouldn't necessarily go as drastic as to try and think, oh, you know, I'll be better off downsizing again.

It's going back to pricing and managing your cash flow correctly.

It doesn't mean that you're gonna have to downsize.

It just means have to manage your cash and get your price right to move forward.

Scaling is actually better because, yeah, if you scale, you're gonna have more money.

So as accountants, we would never, ever try to advise you to kind of scale back because you're limiting your earning potential.

And then as prices increase, as software fees increase, as field rent increases, doesn't matter what you do, the costs of your business from other suppliers will naturally increase because of the rate of inflation.

So it's going to cost you more year on year.

And if you scale back and you get to the stage of where you can't put your prices up and you're hovering just below that VAT registration threshold and you're deliberately keeping yourself under, which, by the way, is bat evasion and is illegal.

So HMRC does look for that, and they wonder why every year you just haven't reached that limit.

But all you're doing is you're limiting your physical amount of money that you're going to be able to pull out of your business and use for you personally.

So our advice would be to, if you have the ability to scale, if you have a good business with a good grasp on your figures and, you know, all of the research that you've done says that by scaling you will end up with more profit, more disposable income at the end of it, then bloody go for it, you know, and, and really start to make an earning for yourselves and a good life.

It's a big one from Sarah Tax.

But at what point would you recommend considering VAT registration?

If we're nearing threshold, I understand it's 90 grand.

If our turnover was projected to be around 86, would you advise proactively registering for that?

Especially if you've never paid that before?

No, don't do it.

Why anyone would voluntarily go fat registers?

I don't know why.

Don't do it.

Yeah, not that, you know, we were sort of then contradicting ourselves.

If you hit it, go for it, smash through it, you've obviously got a good business model, don't keep yourself under it, but if you're under it, don't voluntarily do it, you know, otherwise you're just paying out money for the sake of it.

So if you want our bookkeeping, which I know you are, obviously as you near that threshold, your bookkeeper will obviously have those conversations with you and let you know when you need to register and the different schemes and things like that and help you with the pricing and what you need to do and how to communicate that with your clients.

So I know people hate being VAT registered.

I hate being VAT registered, especially when we have to pay a large sum of money to HMRC every three months, which I'd rather be in my back pocket.

And that's all in the software bill as well.

Yeah, it's design watering when we have to pay that.

But because we manage the money within that three month period, we always have enough to cover it.

But I wouldn't necessarily keep under the right threshold.

You've obviously got a good plan.

You obviously businesses do well.

Again, it's all about managing your finances.

If you do that properly, there's no reason why you should be out of pocket or why it should affect a.

Business to make that successful.

Do not absorb any of the VAT in your prices, pass it straight on to your clients and, and if you're going on the flat rate scheme, and if you can, you know, if you're a groomer, it's 12%, it's 11% in the first year, increase your price by 15% the moment that you go VAT registered and pass that straight on to your clients.

That way you've got a little bit extra because that 15 covers you for about just over a percentage for to raise your prices, to increase the money that you've got.

And it covers all of the VAT that you have to pay over to HMRC on the flat rate scheme.

As long as you do that and you put that VAT money into the VAT pot every single month, then there's nothing stopping your business.

And you have, you know, you can carry on growing, you've got good cash management, you pay HMRC on time and the VAT does not impact you whatsoever.

But it's important that you don't absorb that VAT cost.

You need to pass that along.

We see it all the time, especially on building group.

You know, people say, no, no, I don't pass that cost on to my client because I lose them.

But all you're doing is you're losing your business because you can't afford to absorb it less like, it's just impossible.

You'll just ruin your business if you do that.

So if you only passed along the 5, 5% of the, of the VAT increase, that means out.

If you're on the flat rate scheme, if you didn't put your prices up by 15%, you're now having to pay HMRC 10% out of your profits.

So if you can afford to lose 10% every single month out of your profits to give to hmrc, then you must have had this brilliant business to start with, you know, and, but, but it, it doesn't work.

And that's why people struggle was because they didn't pass that money on to start with.

So once you hit that, that registration threshold, bite the bullet.

If you lose a few clients, you will fill those slots back up again.

It, it, I'm telling you now, you will fill them back up.

Don't, don't worry about this mass exodus, you know, you didn't come to you for a reason.

We were like, oh, like the phase is gonna buy like 60 quid, you know, per client, which is a lot.

And even we panicked and we did lose, what, maybe two or three.

But then obviously since that point, we've gained about 500.

So, yeah, you know, I know it's a different industry, but there's still just as many accounts out there is.

There are dog rumors, you know, we've still got exactly the same amount of competition.

At the end of the day, people come to you because of you and how you are and what you do for them, not how much you charge.

And if they do come for you for the price and they're not the right client for you anyway, and I know it feels I've just lost three clients but then they would have left anyway as soon as a new groomer came along and charged 10 quid for a cockapoo.

So you know they're going to move at some point anyway.

So just don't panic.

I know we're going off a massive tangent now about that, but again we'll do another one of us.

I'm a client.

Opinion 0.

What I have to reki everything if I switch to a new software.

Talking about if we implant the one.

That will yes and no.

Short answer is no.

But you'd have to keep the data that you've got in Xero to one side because when it comes to your tax return we would need the information from both, if that makes sense.

So you don't have to swap.

No, don't want people to think once we get this new.

The new software we're looking at is more aimed at people that are still using pen and paper or spreadsheet or, or on Free Agent.

If you're with us for bookkeeping and you're on zero, you don't necessarily have to change from that because we can do everything else we're doing now.

It's only for those that are on paper.

I think it's really important as well is that this software is, is really basic.

It's very, very.

It's smart in the fact of what it does.

It's very good in reading the receipts and reading your bank statements.

But unlike Xero and Free Agent, it doesn't give us any sort of reports, anything that we can drill down to.

We, we can't tell you how much you're spending on X, Y and Z.

It, it is purely there to, as a, as a, as a lobby mtd for us to submit those four submissions when that comes out and, and then to be able to take figures as a whole figure at the end of the year to do your, your tax returns.

So at the moment, if you're a bookkeeping client of ours, you, you will get so much information from us with the performance packs of how the business is doing.

You can speak to the bookkeepers to tell, you know, are you spending in the right areas, you know, what your profits were, what your income levels were.

So from that perspective, the Free Agent and the Zero software gives you so much more control over your business and so much more insight that it wouldn't make sense to kind of give that up to go to something that is, that doesn't give you the insights that your business would need.

So if you want to grow your business, look at bookkeeping software and a bookkeeping service.

Yeah, if you, if you're, you know, if you're low levels of income and this software is designed for sole traders, not partnerships.

They can't be that registered and ideally they won't have assets either.

So it is purely the basic client that you can think of.

With Easy Tax affairs, you are still.

Using paper and pen or pen and.

Paper or a spreadsheet.

What it will do is it will speed up that process for you.

You don't have to sit there at the end of every night or once the tax year has ended and sit there for hours trying to pull your accounts together.

A quick photograph on the app, upload something from email, just send it an email and you can log into it and say, okay, that was, that was motor expenses, that was computer software and that was that.

Oh, and that's a match.

It's, it's found my, my receipt that I've uploaded.

I just click match and that's.

And that's your bookkeeping and part of your tax return service sorted.

So again, it's going to be individual to, depending on the business and how you set up.

But it, we're just implementing it to help those people do that transition from paper and pen spreadsheet onto the software.

So it might be that you just want, you know, the basics done, in which case you'd go on this software and that that package.

It might be that you want the bookkeeping package that we do, in which case you go on the different software.

So there's going to be options depending on what level of help and support that you want.

Obviously if you're doing it yourself, bookkeeping on Xero, if you wanted to move across, like Lee said, we can take the information, get that information from Xero, just don't cancel it and lose it all before you switch across.

We get it.

Kevin wants Kevin.

My favorite person in the world because of the T shirt he gave me is Zero.

The product that I should use.

I would have.

I, I know that you've given me your bits and pieces, Kevin.

So it's on the list to start.

Let me have a look at what you've sent over to start with and then I'll come back to you personally because I'll judge them whether or not we can go down the simplest software route or software.

But again, it depends if you want to grow your business and you want to understand your business.

If you want to understand your business, then Xero is definitely the way to go and I don't even need to look at the accounts for that.

Yeah.

So hopefully that's helped.

I know it's been like an overload of information.

We will put some stuff on social media with the basics of, of what's happened in the budget.

But basically if you're a sole trader with no staff, nothing really much has changed.

If you have staff then that's maybe when you need to start looking into to pricing and cash flow and things like that.

But we can help you with that.

If you're a client, you can just give us a shout if you're worried.

Carly, I know you've asked a couple of times about employees and apprentices.

If you want to just give us a ring.

It'd probably be easier, Carly, than going into personal stuff on here, so just give us a buzz.

I am going to run through very quickly.

I'll answer this one for Helen and then there's a couple of bits and pieces that I'll tie up to the budget just before we go because there's a few things in there that is changing.

So Helen, you start free agent to record everything.

I've just bought some bits for reselling but it's all on the same invoices.

This shows a decorate with how do I basically go into the transaction in free agent, click more options and then change the amount that, that you know for the, the amount that was for the, the reselling bits and click save and then it splits into two lines on the bank and then the bit that's left you can click and say that was for advertising bits and pieces or, or sunry.

So in regards to the, the budget, the fuel duty remained the same for another 12 months.

So what that basically means is HMRC are not increasing the duty that they charge on fuel and therefore the prices that we see at the pump should remain the same for the next 12 months or obviously they're not going to increase because of the taxes that are on them.

The other thing is capital gains tax is changing.

Now you don't have to worry about capital gains tax unless you have assets or if you're looking to sell your business like a sole trader business being sold or a limited company being sold, if you sell those items, they are capital in nature, I.

E.

It's a capital gains taxation.

It doesn't get taxed on income tax.

Previously the capital gains tax, if you were a lower rate taxpayer, was, was 10%.

It's now going up to 18%.

So you'll pay 8% more on selling a Business if you're a higher rate taxpayer, it was 20% and it's now going up to 24%.

So what else is on there?

One of the things that they.

You are sorry Corp tax.

Yes.

The corporation tax is remaining at 25% so that is fine for the next tax year.

There's no real change there.

Air passenger duty.

So if you go on holidays you will pay 2 pound extra for an economy seat.

But if you like to fly via private jets, it'll typically add on £450 per passenger.

Business rates are changing.

So if you do pay business rates, the amount that you pay will increase.

I believe they had a 70% discount previously and it's now going down to 40%.

So business rates are going up by about 30%.

Mainly going to affect retail space and hospitality businesses.

They are abolishing the non dom tax regime, which basically means that if you are registered as non domiciled in the uk, you could be taxed in the country that you were domiciled, which couldn't be at a lower rate than the uk.

They're getting rid of that loophole to bring all of your worldly goods.

So if you now live in the uk, all of your worldly goods are taxed on UK taxes.

Who likes misses not have to pay.

Tax because they would.

They were a nom dom status counter screwed.

Stamp duty on second homes are increasing from 2% to 5%.

So if you're a second home, you're about to sell that, you're you're going to pay more, more stamp duty.

And they were so good with that one, they've actually implemented that from today.

So poor people buying a house.

Yeah, that was stamp duty and second homes.

Energy is not relevant.

That's on private schools.

That really doesn't affect our clients in terms of their charge outs.

But if you do decide to send any of your children to a private school, then you're going to be paying 20 of that from January of 2025 on on their tuition fees.

That's pretty much it.

So the only other thing that the thing with this budget is that it's condensed down into a very short period of time and they just tell you the headline bits and pieces.

So one of the things that were discovered yesterday was a pickup truck, like a flatbed pickup truck, up until this point has always been classed as a van because in the back of it you can put a one ton payload if you fit the back cab and you can no longer fit a 1 ton payload in because the cab is Added to the weight, it's classed as a car.

But it's been found in the white papers that pickup trucks are now going to be reclassed as cars.

Now, what that means for the industry that we're in, certainly, if you use it for picking up dogs and you've got crates in the back of it, is that once it was classed as a van, we were able to claim the full value of that pickup truck in the year that you bought it and offset all of the value of it to your profit in that year.

Now that it's passed as a car or the.

Or it may be as a car.

If this white paper goes through as part of the budget, we can only claim 6% of its value every single year on a diminishing basis.

So we'll take 6% off this year and then that value that we use, we take that off of the value and you work out what 6% of that was.

A lot of builders and stuff, they buy truck.

Yeah, yeah.

Fans can build farmers, you know, because these, these trucks are workhorses in what they can do.

And, you know, we have got clients that are fitted at the back of them with.

With cages, you know, I mean, Vic's got one, so.

Yeah, yeah, because I wasn't allowed.

It's a pretty good thing now.

Yeah, they are handy if you've got big dogs, like.

Yeah.

So as, you know, as they start to roll through and they come out of the cracks and the woodwork, we will let you guys know.

But that's it from the budget roundup.

However, we have got some exciting news about the company and I'm going to let Vicky tell you about that to me.

Yes, I'm so, as you may or may not know myself, and they were nominated for an award recently, the accounts.

Yeah, we didn't win.

We didn't win.

It was all fix, which was.

It's basically like the Oscars for accountants.

It was.

I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty dull.

But we went because we got nominated and some bastard won.

Whatever.

We're not.

We're not bitter.

We're not bitter.

Not bitter at all.

But anyway, what it did highlight is a lot of these companies had really obscure and funky, memorable, snappy accountancy names.

For example, Ocelot was quite a funky one.

And they.

Did they specialize in content creators or something?

Yeah, social media gamers.

There was like loads of weird and wonderful names and Bishop Fleming that won every award that was going there.

Not that it's fixed their name.

Lots of fun.

But Anyway, it got us to thinking that Thomas & Clark Ltd.

Sounds like two old men wearing a suit and a tie that have pasty crumbs on their chest and sit there with a briefcase and traditional, boring, dull.

Two blokes just sat in the pile of mess.

And that's kind of what made us think, really, that is not us, because, well, maybe half because you're a man.

Boring, dull, accountancy firm.

And we thought that Thomas and Clark just sounded a bit pants when we were thinking about.

Obviously, the pet accountant we have is a trading name of Thomas and Clark.

The pet accountant is not changing.

That is because we specialize in the pet industry.

But the Thomas and Clark side dealt with everybody else, like his standard accountancy clients at plumbers, electricians, bars, cafes, whatever.

So the pet account side is not changing, just FYI.

But we wanted to change the Thomas and Clark side because Thomas and Clark sounds a bit wank.

So we were like, right.

So we thought, we put it out to our staff and said, look, we want to change the name.

We want it to be a bit more snappy, a bit more modern.

Because we are modern, we are digital.

We.

We're coming up with all these weird and wonderful things to help you and we're not.

Brian and David sat coding crumbs.

So we put it out there and what we've decided and what the team's come up with, that's how I make sure I'll pronounce it right.

Yeah.

Now, I'm Culp, so I know what you're thinking.

You're probably like, what on earth does that mean?

And people will say cult, Prio and whatever culture.

And I think.

I think he's going to spell it.

I am going to put on the screen.

The reason we've gone with that is two reasons.

One, because it's a bit snappy, it's a bit more modern, and secondly, it actually means it's a South American or.

Something name for South American fox that's closely related to a wolf.

That has some really good qualities of being loyal, resourceful.

So it ties into our pet science with regards to, you know, what we do on that side and who we really are.

So it's a short, snappy name with a meaning behind it.

So we've updated Companies House as of yesterday and we are now Cold Limited rather than Thomas and Clark.

So our clients are going to start to see emails changing, new logos are in development.

When we text clients, it's going to come up from Calpio rather than Thomas Clark.

So there's Going to be a couple of changes.

Because it's less characters.

But yeah, nothing in essence is going to change from the business side of things.

It's just the name.

Because we thought Thomas and Clark was a bit dull, so traditional.

We tried to get logos designed for it and it.

Even the designer said it's just.

It's such a traditional name.

So it was very difficult.

So we've gone for something really modern that kind of ties in with, you know, what it is that we do and our personalities.

And it just so happens that it was available.

I mean, we went through loads.

I really wanted the Number Ninjas but I was outvoted quite rapidly.

I think we should have gone with the Number Ninjas but, you know, we've gone with Cool or what was the other one?

The Penny Jar.

There's loads.

I was just coming up with loads of random ones.

But then there's people call like the pink pig.

So I mean, there's just so many random names out there.

A lot of them we did come up with had already been taken.

Even Penguin, because I love penguins.

But that's been taken, would you believe?

So no one came up with culpable bean counters.

That was it.

That was the one being said.

Bean counters.

So if you prefer them, let us know.

No joke today, now done it.

So, yes, if you start seeing stuff from cool people, if you are a client and that is us, we've just changed from Thomas and Clark back to the pet accountant is the pet account and that will stay forever more.

That's not going to change.

It's literally just the name.

We haven't sold.

We haven't gone anywhere.

We did.

It's purely just a name changer company's house.

And we couldn't bear John Ames either.

It came, it was like Tamark, which didn't really work.

Or.

Victim.

We don't want that.

No, again, our names don't help either.

Or our initials that didn't work.

So hopefully the designer will come up with us.

See, look, our initials were worse because it just got like terms and conditions every time we wrote it, so.

Oh, what was the other one?

V.

L?

No, LV Liverpool.

See, Tony likes Number Ninjas.

Someone's probably saved next.

But yes, that is a little bit of an update from us.

I know we've.

We've gone into it in quite a bit of depth and it's a bit of a whirlwind, obviously.

Watch it back.

Like I said, if we sold training with no staff, nothing really much has changed.

If you're A limited company with no staff.

Nothing really much has changed.

It's only if you've just got staff that basically is going to be the change.

So if you are a client of ours or you want to be a client of us because of the changes and you want help and to understand a bit better than feel free to give us a ring and we can, we can talk through changes that you might need to make.

So just let us know.

We could not mind readers, if you're stuck, email us, ring us if you want help.

And other than that, our deadline today for your self assessment paperwork.

For those 187 people that still haven't.

Sent their paperwork, expect phone calls.

You need to send it ASAP before we get kneecap Nicolette on the phone to call you to ask you where your paperwork is.

So yes, please, please, please.

Oh yeah, Tegan's staying there.

It's also the deadline as well.

So if you, if you are after the tax calculator where we can work, where you can work out your, your taxes to save there is 31% off them until the end of play today.

So any, any of our digital products, whether that be a bookkeeping spreadsheet, the, the use of home calculator, the like I said, the tax calculator, I think the everything as well.

Basically anything that you can download is 31% off.

So get yourselves on the website.

Tegan, can you put the code up please of what people should be using for.

And we think that everybody knows I.

Think it's Spooky 31.

Spooky 31.

So there you go.

So if you check out your spooky.

31 also the deadline for the all in one package price and it's Spooky 31.

So if you want to come on board, fill in package.

There was one slot this afternoon to speak to Tegan and that is your code.

I'll be no change for sole traders or subcontractors.

So that's fine.

And sent the details at 9:30 last night.

Yes, we will be calling you if we haven't sent it.

We're not being annoying accountants, we're not trying to get any tits.

It's just because the longer you leave it, we're off for two weeks over Christmas and then it's January and then we've got the deadline.

Imagine having 200 dogs arriving at your door room and saying you've got to do that within like two weeks.

And each dog might take anywhere between a few hours to a couple of days to walk.

Exactly.

So just Trying to be possible.

Don't want to work weekends or go.

So please, please, please, if you haven't already, get your school paperwork in.

Like I said, there's going to be a couple of changes with regards to that next year which we will divulge near the time.

I don't think we've got any plans to put our prices up next year.

As far as the moment.

Not from the self assessment side of things anyway.

So there may be some changes with payroll but again it all depends on the software providers because they, they drive that price.

We only change again if our, our overheads have to go up because like you say the software prices and stuff.

But we are 99 sure nothing's going to change as of next year.

Like you said, we can't promise that when it comes to making tax digital because there's going to be a lot more work involved.

So I think prices across the board are going to go as far as accountancy is concerned but obviously we will try and keep that to minimum.

But as of next year 20, well we 24, 25 is fine.

Our prices are not going to change.

Yeah, unless you obviously want this, this software that we can add on to make you.

Yeah, unless you want the software in which case I have.

But again it's not going to be a lot.

Couple of quid.

Yeah.

Which is cheap in the fridge and if you're paying for it.

So there we go.

Right, we're gonna go, I need some lunch and we will try and be back next week.

We have been a bit crap with the lives so we do apologize and it's just because we are so busy when it gets in this time towards Christmas, it's just trying to slot it in before self assessments we're going to do.

So we will try and be back next week with some sort of update.

Maybe we'll do make a tad citical one, who knows.

But we'll make it worth your while.

So thank you for listening.

Make sure that you are.

If you're watching this on the page, make sure you join the group because a lot of things get said in the group and if you're not on our mailing list then please give us your email address so you can go on our mailing list for any updates.

You can get that side as well.

And yeah, hopefully you found it helpful.

Let's all send hate mail to Rachel Reeves and not really don't because I want to get arrested.

But yes, it hasn't been as bad as we thought it was going to be.

But you know, everything will sort out if you've got the right help beside you.

So like I said, reach out if you need us and we will guide you through it.

But not as bad as we thought, but still a bit shit.

It's the overall outcome of it.

We'll see what happens next year.

Yeah.

So, yes, any questions, let us know and we will catch up with you guys next week.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye Bye.

Thanks for listening.

If you've enjoyed my podcast, don't forget to subscribe for me.

And if you want to speak to me, please visit my website at www.petac.

accountant.co.uk and if you'd like to join my Facebook group, which is full of like minded pet professionals, then search Accounting for pet Professionals in Facebook and I will see you there.