Friday 25 May 2018

WYCAS win Adrian Randall Challenge Prize

Claire Welling, Community Accountant at WYCAS (West Yorkshire Community Accounting Service) has collected the Adrian Randall Challenge Prize at the Charity Finance Group’s Annual Conference.   This prize is given for helping with best financial practice in charities.  Our E-learning package which is suitable for trustees, finance workers and volunteer treasurers has won us the prize.

The Charity Finance Group’s Conference was at The Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London and Claire was handed the prize by Caron Bradshaw, CEO of CFG.

For further details on our E-learning course visit here where you can access a sample E-learning quiz.

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Making Tax Digital (MTD) New Regulations

The regulations for MTD have been published. These are known as The Value Added Tax (Amendment) Regulations 2018.  The Regulations set out that businesses, to which the Regulations apply, will be required to retain electronic records using functional compatible software and submit VAT returns via an Application Programming Interface (API) platform.    MTD for VAT will come into effect from 1 April 2019. From that date, businesses with a turnover above the VAT threshold, (currently £85,000), will have to 1) keep their records digitally (for VAT purposes only), and 2) provide their VAT return information to HMRC through MTD functional compatible software.  Do speak to us if you think this will apply to you.  MTD for all other taxes such as income tax and corporation tax will not be implemented until April 2020 at the earliest.

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Tell us if you have a had a notice to file a tax return

We are noticing that more and more charitable companies and in some cases CIOs, (Charitable Incorporated Organisations), are being required to file an annual corporation tax return at HMRC even if they have not carried on any taxable trading activities.
In order to submit a tax return a number of things must be in place before the filing deadline, and these take time to sort out so there is a risk of incurring a late filing penalty if these things are not in place.

If HMRC is going to request you to file a tax return they will issue a ‘notice’ shortly after your year end. This informs you that you have 12 months from the year end to file the return and 9 months and 1 day to pay any tax due, (although as a charity it is highly unlikely you will have a liability, but that is another issue).

In order to file the return this is what must be in place:
1. Register the charity with HMRC 
2. Set up an online government gateway account
3. Activate the corporation tax service on that government gateway account

If you register the charity online then this will automatically create a government gateway account. It will also enable you to claim gift aid as per the above item.

As you can imagine these steps take time so if you have received a notice you need to act. However, it is worth writing to HMRC setting out that you are not carrying on any taxable trading activities and request that HMRC exercise their discretion and not request that you file tax returns. They usually request a return every 5 years in these circumstances.

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Your WYCAS E Bulletin Subscription is Expiring

One of the areas that these regulations cover is consent for data to be processed for one or more specific purposes, for example receiving marketing information.

We have taken the decision to re-establish consent to receive our marketing information and so we will be sending you an email inviting you to give that positive consent shortly so please look out for that – we will lose touch with you without that consent.

You may have heard about the new General Data Protection Regulation which comes into effect on 25 May 2018. As a result, we need your consent in order to continue to send you our monthly E Bulletin.  If you would like to continue receiving our news, advice and training event updates please reactivate your subscription by clicking here.   You may have already done this as we have sent out one reminder.

Unfortunately if you don't do this we won't be sending you any more E Bulletins. You can unsubscribe at any time, by clicking the link at the bottom of emails or by getting in touch with us.

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Our services

WYCAS provides a range of specialist services designed to meet the needs of the third sector:

• One to one support and training
• Preparation of year-end accounts
• Independent examination
• Financial training courses and workshops
• Computerising accounts
• Bookkeeping and management accounts
• Advice and information
• Bespoke consultancy projects

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