Q. Our son is now old enough to attend nursery. Can my company, as my employer, help out with the nursery fees?

A. Your company can provide you with childcare vouchers to be redeemed at registered child care providers, and the first £55 per week of vouchers will be tax and NI free. If both parents work for the company they can each get £55 worth of child care vouchers per week. However, if you pay tax at 40%, you can only receive £28 per week of vouchers tax fee. Those that pay tax at the new highest rate of 45% (from 6 April 2013) can only receive up to £25 per week of tax free vouchers.


The company must offer childcare vouchers to all it's employees who work at the same site, it cannot exclude any employees, but employees can opt out. However, only parents with children aged under 16 can qualify for childcare vouchers. There are a number of other rules which are set out in the HMRC booklet E18: How you can help your employees with childcare.

Q. If my company buys the rights to the intellectual property I create in the form of blogs, websites and online presentations, is that treated as the sale of a capital asset in my hands subject to capital gains tax? If so, can I sell such intellectual property every year for £10,000, so the gain is covered by my annual exemption and I pay no tax?

A. There are two reasons why your plan won't work:


i. You and your company are connected parties. Any transactions between you and the company must be valued at open market value. Is your blog etc. really worth £10,000 on the open market?

ii. The Taxman's view is that transactions involving copyright will generally fall to be taxed as income receipts, not capital gains.

Q. I have put my hairdressing salon up for sale as I can't face the hassle and cost of RTI. I am self-employed and not VAT registered, but the proceeds from the business sale will take me over the VAT threshold. Do I have to register for VAT and charge VAT on the sale of the business?

A. If you sell the business assets and goodwill together, so that the purchaser can pick up where you stop and carry on the business, it will be treated as being a transfer of a going concern and outside the scope of VAT. So you don't have to charge VAT on the business sale or register for VAT. More information about transferring a business as a 'going concern' is given in the VAT leaflet no. 700/9: Transfer of a business as a going concern.

Q. My family business is very traditional; the factory-floor workers are paid weekly, the management are paid monthly and the senior directors are paid quarterly. How will I report all these different pay dates under real time information (RTI)?

A. This is a problem, as the RTI system was designed on the basis that all employees on the same payroll are paid at the same time. Under RTI you must submit a report for the entire payroll called a Full Payment Summary (FPS), every time the employees are paid. Running the FPS with only say the weekly employees receiving pay will cause errors unless adjustments are done for those employees who are not being paid on that particular pay date. A solution may be to segment your payroll into weekly, monthly and quarterly runs, but you need to talk to your payroll software provider to check if that is possible, before you start to implement RTI.

Q. I run a small B&B which has three let bedrooms, my family uses the other two bedrooms of the property. How should I calculate how much of the property's running costs relate to the B&B business?

A. The answer is to include all of the property's running costs (power, rates and repairs) in your B&B accounts and take out, or 'disallow', an amount that relates to your family's use of the property. This is called a private use adjustment. In many towns the private use adjustment for B&Bs has been agreed locally with the Inspector of Taxes as a monthly or annual rate. However, from 1 April 2013 national rates of private use adjustment have been set by the Taxman as follows:

- 1 family member living in the premises: £350
- 2 family members living in the premises: £500
- 3 or more family members living in the premises: £650

Q. The Taxman has sent me a new PAYE code for 2013/14, which includes about £1000 of savings income taxed at 40%. I don't know how he got that figure as I don't have any savings, and I only draw dividends from my company up to the limit of the 20% tax band.

A. The Taxman has looked at the income reported on your tax return for 2011/12, of say £7,475 wages plus £35,000 gross dividends (total £42,475), and assumed you will continue to receive the same amounts of wages and dividends in 2013/14. However, in 2013/14 your tax free personal allowance will be £9,440 and the limit of the 20% tax band will be £32,010 (total £41,450). If you draw the same amounts from your company in 2013/14 as you did in 2011/12, you will be taxed on £1,025 at the higher rate (40% for salary, 32.5% for dividends). To avoid the higher tax rate you will need to restrict the amount you draw from your company in 2013/14, and tell the Taxman to amend your PAYE code on the basis of your estimated salary and dividends for the year.