Latest News

Automatic Enrolment are you compliant?

There are many TV and radio advertisements advising employers of their pension obligations to employees. Regulations came into force from July 2012 with the first pension, automatic enrolment obligations commencing for the largest employers, from October 2012. The smallest and new businesses, will be staging in the coming months with the larger ones having already carried out re-enrolment (every three years). But, and this is the big question, have employers being carrying out their obligations correctly? The Pensions Regulator has announced they will be commencing “spot checks”.

Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) admin burden looming?

Once again the Government is looking to meddle with SSP. It isn’t enough that small employers can no longer recover any monies towards paying employees SSP they now want to “flex” it. Under current rules, SSP is paid as long as certain criteria is met for 28 weeks, but only whilst an employee is not in work. 

Preparing for Making Tax Digital with Xero

Today, we announced jointly with Xero, the migration of several thousand internal clients from Sage onto Xero’s online platform in readiness for the roll-out of HMRC’s new Making Tax Digital rules which come into effect in 2018. The migration confirms our status as Xero’s largest UK accounting partner and one of the UK’s most digitally progressive firms.

The incentive for our uptake of online accounting software was also driven by a need to invest inour future and also to future-proof our clients’ businesses.

End of Year Certificate for the Teachers’ Pension Scheme

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has published a report on some schools and the Teachers’ Pension Scheme submissions of the End of Year Certificates.  The report shares how TPR engaged with employers to understand why they hadn’t complied with their obligations.  Unfortunately the Administrator, even after contacting three local authority schools and 40 non-local authority schools to request their data, were left with no choice but to inform TPR of their failures to submit by the due date.  It meant the Administrator couldn’t reconcile the membership and credit the contributions to the scheme f

A growing team focussed on building relationships and offering face-to-face advice

We are bucking a general trend in financial services by growing the number of face-to-face financial advisers in our team. 

We have recently taken on two additional Financial Planning Consultants to support the growing need of quality and bespoke financial planning advice to individuals and businesses in the Carlisle and North Cumbria areas. 

Steve Shovlin (seen on the right) joins Armstrong Watson Financial Planning with over 20 years’ experience in supporting and advising clients after working at both Santander and RBS locally in Carlisle. 

The National Minimum Wage and its impact on the Hospitality Industry

The National Minimum Wage was introduced over 17 years ago and is now known as the National Living Wage. From 1 April 2017 workers aged 25 and over will be entitled to a payment of £7.50 per hour. This is a rise of 30 pence per hour from the current rate of £7.20 and the government expects the rate to rise to over £9 by 2020.

Almost 4.5 million people are employed in the UK in the hospitality industry, according to The British Hospitality Association (BHA), which is 10% of the total UK workforce.

Learn as you go

As an avid reader of business books, some great some not so, I like to recommend the good ones to clients and colleagues but the response I get most often is “I don’t have the time to read books”. I then go on to discuss the idea I heard several years back of the “University highway” learn on the move.

The risk of security?

Cash under the mattress

If you put £10,000 in cash under the mattress you can go upstairs to check and it’ll still be there.

It won’t diminish but it won’t grow either, but you have comfort of knowing you can access it whenever you want and spend it straight away.

There’s no guarantee that what you can buy today will cost the same in future though, because the price of goods and services are influenced by prevailing interest rates and inflation.

Salary sacrifice conundrum ends

For many years there has been speculation around salary sacrifice schemes i.e. employees exchanging cash remuneration for a benefit in kind. The 2016 Autumn Statement and subsequent government documents have finally ended the conundrum; well sort of!

HMRC says employers are still free to use salary sacrifice schemes, but what does that statement mean in reality? You can continue as you do now for;

Can you live off £8,000 a year in retirement?

If this has grabbed your attention you may be surprised to learn that many people will exclusively rely upon the State Pension to fund their lifestyle in retirement and £155.65 per week (£8,093.80 per annum) is the maximum, assuming you are entitled to it. From April 2017, it’s set to rise to £159.55 per week (£8,296.60 per annum).

Pensions may be a boring subject for many folk, but the more you save the more you can look forward to in retirement and since we are generally living longer, it makes sense to make some form of provision while you are still working.