The Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme will boost the income of charities and reduce their administrative burdens as they don’t have to collect Gift Aid declarations on all small donations.

From April 2013, charities will be able to claim the Gift Aid-style top-up payments from HMRC without needing to get a Gift Aid declaration from donors.

The top-up payment will be 25p for every pound collected in the UK, on up to £5,000 of donations, where the individual donations are £20 or less.

HMRC is consulting on the final policy until 25 May.

The reason many people are still upset about the plans, is because it is seen to be unfair in some circumstances.  For instance, if there is only one higher rate tax payer in the family, earning say £60K, then all of the benefit is lost, but if there are two basic rate tax payers in the family each earning £40K, so a total of £80K, then they would keep their child benefit.  I sincerely hope that the government come up with a plan to stop this unfairness.

This will come into effect in January 2013 and will not mean that the benefit is not received, but that there will be extra tax to pay by those affected to cover the amount of child benefit received.

Please let us know if we can help you with your year end accounts and tax returns or if you need some help with your book keeping in the new year, or both.

Enjoy you Easter break, everybody.

I like that the chancellor’s opening statement, and closing statement, was about “working” our way out of the debt the country is in, this has always been my attitude.  I don’t make a secret of the fact that I don’t like debt, so any move out of this is going to get my “thumbs up”.

Regarding the comments of some about making the rich richer and the poor poorer, I didn’t really feel that, I think the very rich have been hit, but not in a way that would make them poor, so I don’t have an issue with that.  Making the poor poorer?  Well I don’t think that is happening because of this budget, I think that is more to do with past budgets, by this government and the previous one, so irrelevant to this budget.

One thing that did confuse me was the chancellor’s idea of “simplifying” the tax system for the over 65s, by freezing the age allowance until it is in line with the personal allowance.  How is that simplifying anything?  It is merely taking away a very helpful and deserved advantaged that people who have worked all their working lives have enjoyed,  it was never complicated in the first place!

• Look at your marketing strategies, are there any cost-effective methods you could look into?
• Are your existing clients happy with your service/product?  Are they recommending you?  If not, why not?  Ask a few sensitive questions.  Offer loyalty discounts.
• Are your prices competitive?  Look at your market, what are similar businesses charging?  If your prices are higher, are you offering a better service?  If so, make sure you market that extra service.
• Review each cost in your profit and loss account.  What areas can you cut back?  Are there strategic moves you can make, perhaps staff costs, office costs, are there cheaper suppliers who offer the same quality for the goods you sell or use in your business?
• Think outside the box – can you diversify by offering an extra service, maybe you or your clients have discovered a gap in the market for a particular product or service that you could spend some time looking at developing.

It’s always worth having a good brain-storming session to see what can be done, it’s usually far more worthwhile than burying your head in the sand and allowing the current economic storm to wreak havoc.