Running a business in Britain, page 4
246 articles on what it actually takes to run a business in Britain: VAT, staff, rent, rates, tenants, stock and sites. From the studio that simulates it.
- Your first Self Assessment, and the payment on account trap. Your first January bill is often half as much again as you budgeted, because HMRC asks you to pay next year's tax at the same time as last year's.
- Limited company or sole trader, honestly. The tax answer changed when dividend rates did, and it changes again with profit level. Liability and admin often matter more than the few hundred pounds either way.
- Business rates, and the relief nobody claims. Relief on a rateable value under £12,000 can take your bill to nothing, but you usually have to ask for it. The valuation itself can be challenged too.
- Chasing money without losing the customer. Most late payment is not a dispute. It is a purchase ledger paying whoever asks loudest. A ladder that ends in a letter before action usually stops at step two.
- Every British business has a bad January. December takes the money and February spends it. Planning a year as twelve equal months is how a business that trades well still runs out of cash in week six.
- What has to be in a contract of employment. A written statement of particulars is due on or before the first day, not after probation. Some of the clauses people copy from the internet are not enforceable.
- Six ways a first hire goes wrong. Most first hires fail for reasons decided before the person started. No job description, no induction, no review, and a salary set by affection rather than by value.
- The insurance you need and the insurance you are sold. One policy is required by law and can be fined daily. Most of the rest is judgement, and the useful reading is the exclusions rather than the cover summary.
- Franchise or independent. A franchise fee buys a system and a queue of customers who already know the name. It also buys a rulebook you cannot change and an exit priced by somebody else.
- Buying a business that already exists. The accounts look fine, the lease has six years to run and the seller wants out because of his knees. Here is what to check before you believe any of it.
- Marketing for a business nobody has heard of. You have opened, the sign is up, and nobody knows. The cheapest marketing a British small business can do is mostly unglamorous and mostly free.
- The second site is a different business. The first shop works because you are in it. The second one is a test of whether the business exists without you, and most owners find out the answer too late.
- Gross margin is the number to watch. A 2% price rise can do more for you than a 20% sales push, and cost you nothing. Gross margin is the number that tells you which lever is worth pulling.
- Corporation tax, associated companies and the marginal band. Two companies, identical profits, different tax bills. The gap is the marginal band and the number of companies you happen to control.
- Making Tax Digital, in plain terms. The spreadsheet is not banned. Typing numbers off it into a portal is. Who Making Tax Digital applies to, from when, and what a digital link actually means.
- Making somebody redundant, properly. Redundancy is about the job disappearing, not the person. Get that distinction wrong and what you have is an unfair dismissal with a cheque attached.
- Health and safety without the folder of nonsense. Nobody has ever been prosecuted for having a thin risk assessment folder. They get prosecuted for the thing in the corner everybody had stopped noticing.
- Selling up, and what a buyer is really buying. A buyer is not buying your business. He is buying the profit it makes after you leave, which is usually a smaller number than the one in your accounts.