January, and the vexed question of self-assessment rears its head again. My accountant friends have said good bye to the family until February and closeted themselves with quill pens and envelopes of receipts. Others have burned the midnight oil trying to complete their online returns. Still others – like me for example – pay the bill to the accountant, send off a small corrective payment to HMRC and wonder what all the fuss is about.

In my case that cheque is for precisely eighty pence. Can’t pay that online so a cheque it will have to be. Which will cost the drones in HMRC around £30 to process but basic economics was never really their strong point. And it’s only outstanding in the first place because last year I ignored a similarly trivial underpayment and this year got rightly stung for the interest.

Meanwhile, away from the distractions of the self-assessment merry-go-round, a rather more invidious tax change has crept in, largely unannounced and unremarked. As of now, there is a limit on how much cash you can take out when closing your company under the provisions of Extra-Statutory Concession 16 of just £25,000. Anything over that attracts Capital Gains tax at the relevant rate. Great. More taxes you never knew you owed.

There is a way around it; you simply have to liquidate your company. That means using the services of a liquidator who, incidentally, can’t be your current accountant. And it seems that such a service comes in at around seven grand a pop. Until, that is, Liquidators-R-Us get up and running and the cost comes down, so defeating the whole purpose.

But if you think about it, if the idea is to increase the CGT take from closing companies, why leave the Liquidation loophole in the first place? Joined-up thinking? Not at all, merely another excuse to get taxes imposed by relying on people not knowing the detail.

But what really irritates me about this is the underlying assumption by HMRC that a company’s sole purpose is to grow into an eternal corporate body and any that don’t are not to be taken seriously. There is no acceptance or understanding that if you are working in a world where income is variable and frequently non-existent, using a company to store and distribute your income evenly across the year is the best way to do it. And when you finally stop grinding away at the coal face you want to get your money back as efficiently as you can while paying whatever levies are due to the Treasury, not to some pointless corporate leech.

It’s exactly the same mindset that got us IR35 in the first place. We have companies. We don’t have 300 employees and a pile of plant and machinery so we must be cheating the taxman, else why have the company? Well there’s S44-47 for one thing and the idiot tax liability transfer rules it embodies. But hey, that’s no excuse.

I have to conclude that the increasingly rapacious predations of HMRC are the single biggest inhibitor to the recovery we can think of. It’s all very well the Government saying we need a vibrant and flexible workforce, and we’d love to give them one, but getting constantly cut off at the knees by a body that has absolutely no experience or expertise in the real world is getting more than a little wearing.

And finally it’s the next meeting of the infamous IR35 Forum soon. There is a hope that they will come up with a final answer to the IR35 question. Personally, I’m not hopeful. Can’t imagine why…

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There’s no doubt about it, the wholesale contractor accountancy marketplace is big business and everyone wants a piece of the action.

In recent months, a new wave of online accountants have been hitting the forums and contractor portals hard in the hope of gaining a foothold in what is already a fragmented market. Their message is clear – why pay £130 a month for the ‘old school’ contractor accountants when you can get the same, if not better service for a third of the price?

It’s a pretty compelling argument and their proposition is almost too good to be true.

Lets dig a little deeper.

Was is an online accountant?

An online accountant offers contractors an ‘end-to-end’ accounting service. This usually combines a bespoke web-based accountancy package that is backed up by a team of accountants and personal account managers. The idea here is that the contractor or freelancer is able to create invoices, manage their expenses and calculate a real-time view of their business. This then enables them to work out how much they can pay themselves (in PAYE salary, expenses and dividends) without having to produce in-year accounts or time-consuming reconciliations.

Obviously there is an element of work required by the end-user but certainly no more than you are asked to do when working through a traditional contractor accountant, and in some cases much less. The technology is also impressive. Real-time feeds into HMRC, Companies House and the government Gateway make online accountants the perfect choice for any time-precious contractor.

Of course, the more challenging aspects of accounting are managed by the online accountants who will submit VAT, corporation tax and personal self assessment returns on behalf of their clients. They will also handle the Companies House annual return and accounts as well as advising on complex issues such as IR35, family business tax, ESC 16 and the agency workers directive.

How much does an online accountant cost?

Most online accountants pitch their monthly fees around the £50-£60 mark. This includes all of the above services as well as unlimited telephone support and free company setup.

Why are online accountants so cheap?

One word – volume. Most high street accountants are happy with 100-200 clients and are therefore keen to maximise their return on investment for what is a relatively small client base. By making their business scalable, online accountants on the other hand are able to service more and more contractors without taking an enormous hit to their margins. This is why their fees are way cheaper than some of the more well-known contractor accountants.

Where can I find out more?

We have a selection of online accountants in our top 10 directory although companies such as Crunch and My Accountant Friend are definitely worth a closer look. A quick search in Google will throw up at least another 20 providers at the time of writing so take the time to do your research. My guess is that this is just the start of a new and exciting time for the contractor accountancy marketplace……I shall watch with interest.

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