The good weather has returned and we hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine. Long may it continue, but enjoy it while you can as Christmas is only 14 weeks away!

Here at Smarter Accounting, we’ve started to move some bits into the new Teignmouth Office, and we are all set for move day on the 30 September. Just be aware on the 30 September the Teignmouth Team will be unavailable, but we will be back up and running on the 1 October, in our great new office!

On to some news and information snippets that we think will be useful for clients:

• Furlough Scheme – September sees the Government contribution drop from 80% to 70%. This means that employees will still receive a minimum of 80% of their average wages, the Government will refund 70%, but the employer will have to make up the other 10% (or more if topping up to 100%). October will see the Government’s contribution drop to 60%
• BE AWARE of HMRC and Other Scams – The COVID 19 pandemic seems to have brought the worst out of scammers. There have been various news items over the last few weeks about a significant rise in scamming activity. These seem to mainly centre around HMRC phone calls, texts, and emails, but we have also heard about Bounce Back Loan Scams. We have had calls from clients who have received phone calls from people purporting to be from HMRC. Please be aware and if you have any doubts, please do not hesitate to contact us and we can advise or make enquiries directly with HMRC to get to the bottom of things.
• Self Assessment Tax Return Deadline – As previously mentioned, we are approaching the self assessment deadline and we just thought we would expand on this, with some more specific dates. For our clients, the earlier the records are brought into us the better:
  • 31 October 2020 – Deadline for paper returns
  • 31 December 2020 – Deadline for filing returns with tax bills of less than £3,000, where the tax bill is to be set against PAYE Tax code
  • 31 January 2020 – Deadline for electronic returns. The final deadline!
• New Staff! – Things have been busy at Smarter this year and we have made a number of new appointments recently. Some of these are replacements, but most are totally new positions. We are sure you will join us in welcoming them to the team:
  • Anne-Marie – Has joined the Team as our admin manager, to help cope with the administration burden. Anne-Marie has a wealth of experience and is working across both Crediton and Teignmouth offices
  • Danielle – Has joined the Crediton Team. Danielle has many years of accountancy practice experience and joins us from a firm in East Devon
  • Katie – Has joined the Teignmouth Team. Katie has worked for accountancy practices before, but more recently has been working for herself supporting local businesses in and around the Dawlish area
  • Abigail – Has joined the Teignmouth Team. Smarter has finally appointed Abigail after she turned us down a few years ago! Abigail has previously worked for a couple of Mid Devon firms

If you have any questions on the above, please do not hesitate to contact us.

The Smarter Accounting Offices continue to be staffed, but not currently open for face to face meetings. We can always make other arrangements for video conferencing, telephone calls and at times garden meetings if required. If you are dropping off or collecting records via the office, please notify us in advance.

Please be aware that we are reviewing our policy regards COVID 19 on, at least, a weekly basis.

We provide more regular updates via Facebook. Therefore, if you want the latest news then like our Facebook page here >>

Best wishes and stay safe!