Mercer & Hole’s Business blog - Running the business

With the increase in company fraud involving the lodging of forged statutory forms with companies house it is now important that every company considers using internet filing to ensure it keeps its statutory details up to date and “safe”. Applying for internet filing is straight forward. Go to...

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When completing the audit of one of my clients this week we noticed that the company’s registered office address had mysteriously changed.  My surprised client had never heard of the address some 50 miles away. We obtained a copy of the signed form 287 from companies house and it became apparent that the director’s signature had been forged ...

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The long awaited decision on Arctic Systems This all seems to have been going on for so long you may need reminding of what all the fuss is about; so - Mr and Mrs Jones ran a small IT company of which Mr Jones was the sole director. They each owned one share in the company took a small salary and extracted the majority of their required funds by way of dividend. These, of course, were paid in line with the shareholdings, on a 50:50 basis. Nothing out of the ordinary there so what was the problem? It seems to be...

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I have been reading the latest batch of consultative documents and finally reached the stage of deciding enough is enough. The paper that tipped the scales was the Discussion Document on the Taxation of Foreign Profits (comments on this will follow separately). Ignoring the “use” of English worthy of Big Brother (the original not Channel 4 version!) the content is also unhelpful. The introduction was, shall I say, interesting – it referred to the Budget 2007 reforms and other proposed measures as “refocusing the tax system’s support for small businesses.” Forgive me, but how does increasing...

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When the new Companies Act comes into force later in the year, the period for filing private company financial statements reduces from 10 months to 9 months whilst that for public companies reduces from 7 months to 6 months. To me this seems a cop out and a missed opportunity. I would have liked to have seen all companies filing deadline being six months. In today’s technological age I can see no reason why any company needs more than six months to complete their accounts and if this was the filing deadline then the information at Companies House would be far more...

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As all company directors are no doubt aware, a company must display its full company name on a range of documents including business letters, notices, official publications, orders, cheques, invoices, receipts and letters of credit. In addition a company needs to include on all its business letters and order forms additional information including its place of registration, company number and the address of the registered office. However, following the sexily named “The Companies (Registrar Languages and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2006”, websites too will also have to include the information required for business letters. The website will also need to...

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I was talking to an American client recently who asked me why the UK still has legislation from 1985. Thankfully this is about to change. The Companies Act, and the various revisions to it, dictate the way most business is conducted and administered in the UK. A major revision to the act has been finalised, with the final changes being implemented in October 2008. The major upside of this for Companies is that the amount of ‘red tape’ is expected to be reduced – especially for small businesses. This is a relief for the many directors and shareholders who find...

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