Businesses need cash to be able to pay staff on time, buy supplies, repay debts on time and to pay dividends etc. If you don’t have cash to pay a supplier when the payment is due, you might find you lose the trust of the supplier and the outlet AND they may declare your business insolvent.

Measuring the finances of your business is an essential part of managing the business and is a critical element of sound decision-making and future planning. Many business owners delegate the financial matters to other Directors or to their accountants and often cite that they “prefer to look after the sales function or the front line team.”

When tax planning it is very important to give equal consideration to business and personal tax affairs. Taking a ‘holistic’ approach may sound a bit ‘airy-fairy’ but it makes a very concrete difference between incurring tax unnecessarily and paying the legal minimum.

‘DC’, business owner with an annual turnover of £5.5m asked: “After the budget, tax planning is changing again yet what is the best way to avoid paying Tax on profit in a Ltd company? Is a pension contribution as good as anything else or an EBT contribution? Any suggestions?”

Some commentators have argued that the forthcoming changes to CGT have been on the cards for some time, although during the Election campaigning it was only the Lib Dems that formally announced their intentions. Subsequently incorporated into the new coalition government’s policies, we can expect CGT rates for top earners to more than double for [...]