A new study by the Ethisphere Institute and Jones Lang LaSalle has discovered that businesses that allow staff to work from home will benefit from increased employee honesty.

The Big Four accountancy firms seem to be turning their back on university graduates and focusing on developing training programmes for A level graduates, according to a recent article in the Guardian.

Accountants for contractors may wish to warn clients with undeclared income in Swiss bank accounts, because further details have now been announced of the historic Anglo-Swiss tax agreement that would see UK citizens penalised for this.

Regular readers will know I have never had a lot of respect for the average agency, thinking that most of them exhibit a degree of professional casualness totally at odds with their advertising.

HMRC recently announced that five plumbers have been arrested as part of its crackdown on unpaid tax. In addition to the arrests that took place during raids in Hampshire, London, Middlesex, Surrey and West Bromwich, a further 500 investigations are ongoing.

Are many accountants for contractors regretting their career choice?

The National Audit Office recently published a report stating that £275 million worth of taxpayers’ money was wasted by the Civil Service last year on ineffectual training courses.

Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP, the city law firm, has reported that 1,437 disqualification orders were placed on directors of companies, including the clients of contractor accountants, that had gone into insolvency last year, a 4 % increase on the number imposed in 2009.

I got involved in a fairly interesting little debate recently: when is it a good idea to encourage people to compete for your own market? This is not quite as silly a question as it sounds.

Analyst firm Gartner has predicted that a lot of businesses will concentrate on revising their privacy policies next year in the wake of ever-advancing technology.

Accountants for contractors may be interested to learn that HMRC has launched a consultation on the proposal to make online filing of VAT returns compulsory for firms with a turnover of under £100,000.

Smaller firms may be pleased to learn that the government is considering giving them more time to get ready for automatically enrolling their employees in pension schemes.