Edition 63

Income Shifting is Coming
A P Robinson & Co's Free Web 2.0 Marketing Seminar
A P Robinson & Co's Free Employment Law Seminar with Gosschalks Solicitors
Key Dates For Your Diary

From 6 April 2008 it will be far more difficult to reduce your tax bill by paying dividends or profit shares to less active shareholders in your company or members of your partnership. This is because of a new law on income shifting that will affect nearly every partnership and jointly owned company in the UK. It doesn't matter whether those co-owners (partners or shareholders) are married, other relatives or simply friends.

If you make a bigger contribution to the business than your co-owners, but receive a similar share of the profits, the Taxman could argue that you have shifted income away from yourself, so it falls into the hands of those co-owners who play a less active roll in the business. You will have to pay tax on the amount of shifted income, and the less active co-owner(s) will be treated as having never received that shifted income.

Although the new income shifting law will only affect dividends or profits shares paid out from 6 April 2008, those profits may have been earned by the business many years earlier. If you are planning to pay a dividend on 6 April 2008, to place that income in the 2008/09 tax year, you may want to bring the payment forward to avoid the new income shifting rules. However, you should be careful of pushing your total income for 2007/08 into the higher tax bracket.

If you want to continue to pay profit shares or dividends to less active co-owners of your business from 6 April 2008, you will need to justify the amount paid according to the recipient's contribution to the business. This contribution could be measured by:

You may need to adjust the agreed profit sharing ratio of your partnership, or the number of shares each individual holds in your company, to reflect the actual input of each individual. We can help advise you on the best action to take and what to do in order to reduce the risk of being attacked for income shifting.

Would you like to further sharpen your knowledge of how to optimise your online marketing strategies to drive sales? Are you concerned with the downturn in the economy? If you are, then you should attend this free seminar.

A P Robinson & Co Charted Accountants would like to invite you to our free seminar on Web 2.0 Marketing.

Web 2.0 Marketing is a form of viral advertising technique that uses social network sites to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. The sole purpose: To drive business to your commercial site with the objective of increasing profits. The great thing is web 2.0 marketing is relatively simple to implement.

As the Marketing Manager for A P Robinson & Co, I will also give a specialist briefing on how to generate free publicity through Public Relations.

The seminar will take place here at A P Robinson & Co and last for approximately an hour.

The agenda is as follows:

2.00 Introductions
2.10 Public Relations briefing
2.20 Web 2.0 Marketing seminar
3.00 Question and Answer session and an opportunity to network with other attendees

The dates and times for this free seminar are:

Tuesday 26th February 2008 starting at 2pm
Thursday 13th March 2008 starting at 2pm

To gauge numbers and refreshment requirements if you are interested in attending please could you telephone Lizzy Dale on 01472 345888 or email lizzy.dale@aprobinson.biz.

If you know of any contacts who may also be interested in attending, please pass on this information. If you have any questions or require further information then please do not hesitate to get in contact.

A P Robinson & Co would like to personally invite you to our Employment Law seminar in association with Gosschalks Solicitors. Together we will help businesses of all sizes deal with the complexities of employment law.

These free employment law seminars aim to provide you with practical guidance and common sense solutions to the problems faced by employers today. We will tell you about new legislation and upcoming changes in the law, recent cases which have changed the law and anything else of significance to employers. It is however definitely not a law lecture and we will limit the seminar to just one hour. We aim to give you practical advice you can use in real life situations.

Both our organisations pride ourselves on being friendly, approachable and easy to talk to.

Issues covered this March include whether employees on long term sick accrue holidays, workers from overseas, stricter rules on redundancy, recent cases on constructive dismissal and age discrimination as well as other developments in the last six months.

The format is informal and friendly and there are detailed handouts to take away.

Seminars start at 5.30 p.m. but many of our guests join us for drinks from 5 p.m. onwards. We finish at 6.30 p.m.

These free seminars are on the following dates:

Monday 10th March at the Millfields Hotel, Grimsby
Monday 17th March at Forest Pines, Scunthorpe

�and are open to any business or organisation who wishes to attend.

Please feel free to circulate this to colleagues or friends. We do hope you will be able to join us.

Please telephone Lizzy Dale if you would like to attend on 01472 345888 or email lizzy.dale@aprobinson.biz or fax 01472 345777.

A P Robinson & Co will acknowledge your booking by e-mail with full details of the venues and how to get there. All venues have parking. If you have any enquiries please contact either Lizzy Dale on 01472 345888 or lizzy.dale@aprobinson.biz