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DID YOU KNOW

Budget 2010 – How will it affect your business?

In his final Budget before a much-anticipated General Election, Chancellor Alistair Darling faced something of a delicate balancing act as he outlined a series of measures aimed at tackling the deficit while supporting economic recovery.  His Budget included a number of major funding announcements targeted at UK businesses, in particular extra support and tax breaks for small firms:

-  A £2.5 billion one-off “Growth Package” to boost skill development and innovation in small business

-  A new £500 million Growth Capital Fund to invest up to £10 million fin high potential businesses

-  The creation of a new body, UK Finance for Growth, to oversee all government support for businesses

-  A £35 million University Enterprise Capital Fund for spin-out companies and knowledge transfer

-  The establishment of a £2 billion Green Investment Bank to support low carbon industries

-  Tax breaks for the UK computer games sector, an industry in which the UK leads the world

-  A 1-year relief in small business rates that is due to take effect from October

-  Continued flat rate of capital gains tax (CGT) at 18%

-  Increasing the “entrepreneurial CGT relief” to £2m from 6 April 2010  (see more aabout it in the “Read All About It” section)

-  Increasing the Annual Investment Allowance (100% relief) to £100,000 for plant / machinery from April 2010.   

-  Extension in Time to Pay facility to support businesses with cash flow difficulties

Predictions for the future – by Richard Mannion, national tax director at Smith Williamson:

-  A VAT rise must be top of the agenda, as every 1%  increase brings in just under £5billion a year.

- A rise on  CGT is almost inevitable as at the current rate of 18% it is much less than the higher rates of income tax, which encourages people to convert income into capital.

-  The big earners for the government are income tax, national insurance and VAT.  Together, these taxes typically represent around 75% of the government’s annual revenue. So unless there are tax rises in one or more of these areas in the near future, the government will have very little chance of balancing the books.

“We remain convinced that swift action to tackle the budget deficit is needed” said Miles Templeman, Institute of Directors

 BLOG POST

Is Gordon Brown right to spend £30 million on an Institute of Web Science?

Following on from the modernisation issues included in the Budget, the Government announced the creation of the new Institute for Web Science that would be run by the Universities of Oxford and Southampton and headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, and Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Southampton.   And this is where it starts to get complicated… read more…

BUSINESS TIP

Don’t miss the 2nd Pitch to Win Competition

Business Pitch Competition with angel investor judges, cash prize for the winner and mentoring feedback for all entries!

Closing date for submissions: 6 April, midnight

Live final: 19 April, 6.30pm

So how did the first “Pitch to Win” competition go? Well, our winner has received a funding offer from one of the judges and they have been working together ever since on developing his venture. Two of the other 5 finalists have also been contacted by investors – and that is just what I am aware of! Building on this pretty impressive story, we will run the second series of the “Pitch to Win” competition on the 19th April, with a superb panel of judges.

Are you not looking for funding? No reason for not entering; come to practice, learn, get feedback or find new customers.

Competition entry fee: £20 – remember that if you win, you get this and much more back!

For full details and to register please go to: http://www.meetup.com/startup-fasttrack/calendar/12016408/

READ ABOUT IT

What is “entrepreneurs CGT relief”?

Entrepreneurs’ Relief is a Capital Gains Tax (CGT) concession on qualifying business disposals, providing a 10% rate on business sales up to a maximum lifetime allowance of £2m.   Entrepreneurs relief can be claimed any number of times from 6th April 2008, up to the lifetime limit of £2 million.  Capital gains tax of 18% will apply on amounts greater than this limit.

There are a number of conditions which apply for business owners who wish to use Entrepreneurs’ Relief:

1)      A business disposal can apply to gains made on the disposal of all or part of a business or gains made on disposals of assets following the cessation of a business. 

2)   The relief will also apply to gains on disposals of shares (and securities) in a trading company (or the holding company of a trading group) provided that the individual making the disposal:

• has been an officer or employee of the company, or of a company in the same group of companies
• owns at least 5% of the ordinary share capital of the company and that holding enables the individual to exercise at least five per cent of the voting rights in that company

Trustees will also be able to benefit from Entrepreneurs’ Relief on gains on assets used in a business.

3)   The relief is not retrospective, and won’t include past disposals.

TOP STORIES

Facebook’s plans to overtake Google and rule the web

Facebook is going to launch this April a “Like” button for the entire Internet that will incentivise third party sites to interact deeply with Facebook by sharing content and associated metadata.  Another major product Facebook plans to unveil is a persistent toolbar that third-party sites can integrate (similar to Meebo bar).

These new features make it abundantly clear that Facebook is looking to extend its reach to as much of the web as possible, and it won’t be an opt-in experience.  Instead, Facebook is looking to become a ubiquitous, integrated feature of these sites, a sort of backbone for the web designed to facilitate sharing with friends; with everything leading back to Facebook.

Third-party access to Facebook users’ activity data is good for publishers, but even better for Facebook, as hundreds of thousands of websites will rush to format their content to exactly Facebook’s preference and send over all their data without a second thought.  While Google spends billions of dollars indexing the web for their search engine, Facebook will get the web to index itself for Facebook.   A really visionary idea!

Story link: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/27/facebook-meebo-bar/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

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Self-published books to be available on iPad

Electronic book publisher Lulu told its top authors last weekend that their electronic books can be made available on Apple’s new iBookstore that is debuting with the launch of the iPad on April 3.

Lulu said it would automatically convert books for submission to the iBookstore, unless authors didn’t want their books published on the iPad.  Smashwords, another self-publishing e-book company, also said over the weekend that its books can be made available on the iBookstore.  Authors will receive proceeds after Lulu and Apple take their cut.

Story link: http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/03/29/self-published-books-on-lulu-to-be-available-on-ipad/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29

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Firms face £2m fine for silent calls

Firms which cause nuisance and distress to consumers through silent and abandoned calls will face a new maximum fine of £2 million, a significant increase on the current limit of £50,000, to more fully deter organisations that persistently make silent calls to consumers.

Silent calls are generated by call centres that use automated calling systems (ACS).  In some cases the system dials more numbers than there are staff available to speak to the person who picks up the phone, resulting in a silent call.

Ofcom research into the issue, carried out between October and December 2009, found that 47% of adults felt ‘very inconvenienced’ by silent calls and 32% were ‘very concerned’. During the same period, 3,500 consumers contacted BT’s Nuisance Calls Bureau and in February 2010, over 14,000 callers to the Bureau listened to recorded advice on silent calls. OFCOM received over 6,500 complaints about silent calls in 2009.

Story link: http://www.wired-gov.net/wg/wg-news-1.nsf/lfi/412488