Heat Pump Scheme

Many households are considering their options to reduce their energy costs in light of the recent price hikes in the cost of electricity and gas.

 

Aside from breaking into long sealed chimney breasts and burning the furniture, realistic options have been extended in recent weeks by the introduction of a government grant of £5,000 to replace fossil fuel boilers with efficient, low-carbon heat pumps.

Grants available in England and Wales

Homeowners across England and Wales can now benefit from the grants to fit clean heating systems when they come to replace their oil and gas boilers. This includes clean heating systems installed from 1 April this year.

Heat pumps are now much cheaper and more competitively priced against gas and oil boilers than ever before and thanks to these grants, it will be significantly cheaper for consumers to install a heat pump whilst improving the energy efficiency of their homes, reducing their energy bills and cutting emissions in the long-term.

Spin-off for British manufacturers

The scheme will also help kick-start the British heat pump manufacturing industry, helping government and industry to achieve the aim of bringing down the cost of the technology to ensure they are no more expensive to buy and run for consumers than fossil fuel boilers by 2030 when more households will be looking to make the switch.

With the market for electric heat pumps set to rapidly expand in Europe over the coming years, there is also a huge export opportunity for British firms in research and development, production, supply chain and installation over the next decade, creating well-paid jobs across the country.

How the scheme works

Scheme funding will be available through a simple application procedure that installers carry out on behalf of property owners, with the up-front funding taken off their quote.

The grants are in addition to the 5-year long 0% rate of VAT on the installation of heat pumps and biomass boilers, announced as part of a package of measures to help ease the cost of living.

The scheme has a committed budget of £450 million over 3 years from 2022-2025, with an annual budget allocation of £150 million and property owners will be able to get:

  • £5,000 off the cost and installation of an air source heat pump
  • £5,000 off the cost and installation of a biomass boiler
  • £6,000 off the cost and installation of a ground source heat pump

As well as not having to use expensive fossil fuels, heat pumps are also more efficient to run, able to deliver more than three units of heat for every unit of energy input, while traditional gas and oil boilers deliver less that one unit of heat per unit of energy.

Commercial risk

Setting up and running your own business is a risky undertaking. What happens if sales reduce or disappear, and you are left with unpaid costs or loans and no cashflow?

 

The experience of recent COVID lockdown challenges – aside from the risk to personal health – has resulted in business closures at an unprecedented rate.

 

So how can businesses manage these risks?

Business structure

Sole traders and partnerships (aside from LLPs – see note below) have no limitation of liability. If creditors (including banks) cannot recover unpaid debts from net business assets, then they can pursue claims against the personal assets of the sole trader or individual partners. This can include a family home.

 

One way to avoid this risk is to set-up or convert the business structure. There are two ways to do this.

 

Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs)

It is possible to retain a self-employed status by converting a sole-trader or ordinary business partnership into an LLP structure. This would protect active partners from any claim against their personal assets in the event that the business became insolvent.

 

Limited company (Ltd)

The other option is to fully incorporate a self-employed business by transferring the business to a Ltd structure.

 

Unless directors offer creditors, a personal guarantee or can be proved to be acting fraudulently, the company’s creditors would only have access to business not personal assets.

 

Insurance

Self-employed and incorporated business can also insure against certain risks. They are risks associated with theft, damage to assets or claims against the business for losses experienced by third-parties.

Care should be taken if a self-employed person or partnership (not an LLP) relies on insurance to cover these risks.

Underwriters of insurance companies have a history of challenging claims based on the exclusions set out in policy small print.

 

Planning is your best option

Please contact us if you feel exposed to commercial risks and want to consider your options.

Landlords switch to holiday lets

Cornwall, and we expect many holiday locations, are seeing an increase in landlords switching from domestic letting to holiday lets. Aside from the increased rents they can obtain, should they be successful in making this transition, there are tax as well as commercial advantages.

 

It all comes down to occupancy.

What are the tax advantages?

There are a number of tax incentives if you own and let a furnished holiday lets property (FHL). They include:

 

  • Claiming Capital Gains Tax reliefs for traders (Business Asset Rollover Relief, Business Asset Disposal Relief, relief for gifts of business assets and relief for loans to traders),
  • Entitlement to claim capital allowance deductions for items such as furniture, equipment and fixtures, and
  • Profits earned from holiday lets count as earnings for pension purposes.

 

HMRC consider FHL activity as a business. However, to qualify as an FHL landlords need to meet certain occupancy and other rules.

 

What are these rules?

There are a number of tax incentives if you own and let a furnished holiday lets property (FHL). They include:

 

They include:

  • The property must be in the UK or in the European Economic Area (EEA) – the EEA includes Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
  • The property must be furnished. This means that there must be sufficient furniture provided for normal occupation and your visitors must be entitled to use the furniture provided.
  • The property must be commercially let (you must intend to make a profit). If you let the property out of season to cover costs, but did not make a profit, the letting will still be treated as commercial.
  • All your FHLs in the UK are taxed as a single UK FHL business and all FHLs in other EEA states are taxed as a single EEA FHL business. You will need to keep separate records for each FHL business because the losses from one FHL business cannot be used against profits of the other.

As well as these restrictions, FHL property will need to meet strict occupancy rules.

 

Occupancy

To secure the FHL tax benefits landlords will need to let FHL properties for a certain, minimum number of days each year. The occupancy rules, set on a tax year basis, are:

 

  • Your property must be available for letting as furnished holiday accommodation letting for at least 210 days in the year.
  • You must let the property commercially as furnished holiday accommodation to the public for at least 105 days in the year.

 

Days when the property is let to friends or relatives of the landlord at zero or reduced rates do not count towards these occupancy rules as this would not be considered a commercial let.

 

Longer-term lets of more than 31 days are likewise excluded unless the 31 days is exceeded because something unforeseen happens. For example, if the holidaymaker either: falls ill or has an accident and cannot leave on time or has to extend their holiday due to a delayed flight.

 

If you do not let your property for at least 105 days, there are two options (known as elections) that can help you reach the occupancy threshold if certain criteria apply.

 

Increased admin

FHL landlords will need to maintain fairly detailed booking records to provide evidence that they are meeting the various occupancy rules. There will also be additional housekeeping costs and chores to deal with the increased throughput of tenants.

 

However, aside from the tax advantages and these chores, the potential FHL rental income should be higher than from longer term domestic lettings.

 

Need more advice or information

If you need more advice or details on how to switch to FHL status, pick up the phone, we would be delighted to help.

Flexible planning

If we lived in a world where the factors that affected trade and other commercial activity were unchanging, then plans drawn up for extended periods, say a year, would be a reliable benchmark to measure actual results against in the same period.

Unfortunately, change is a common occurrence these days. Plans drawn up will become unreliable if, as recent experience with the impact of COVID has proved, significant changes in the background economy occur.

 

UK businesses are spinning multiple plates at present. Inflation – rising to 10% or more – Brexit issues, supply chain problems, a world shortage of computer chips, the rising cost of utilities – gas, oil and electricity – and there is always the threat from a possible, new COVID variant.

 

Flexing your budgets

Without a doubt, preparing a business plan shortly before the beginning of a new trading year makes sense. But as the factors or assumptions that underpin the plan are seen to be changing, then it makes sense to flex your budget to take these changes into account.

The primary advantage of this approach is to see how the impact of inflation, supply chain issues and other factors affect profitability cash flow and solvency for the reminder of the period under review.

 

Advantages of being informed

Your flexible business budget will enable you to make decisions based on your best estimation of the road ahead.

Resist the temptation to make do, to assume that your rising costs and inflation damaged sales can be somehow, magically overcome. That all will be OK on the day…

Whilst it may not be possible to discover what you need to do by uncovering your business crystal-ball, by spending time each month to reflect on the major changes affecting your business and following through these changes to your business plans, will inevitably place you on solid ground and best prepared for challenges ahead.

 

We can help

We can help you create and flex your annual budgets, produce reports that compare these budgets to actual results, and help you decide on the most effective changes to minimise any downside effects on your profits, cash flow and solvency.

New Bill protects consumers access to cash

The new Financial Services and Markets Bill, announced during the recent Queen’s Speech at the state opening of parliament, will support consumers by protecting access to cash. It will ensure the continued availability of withdrawal and deposit facilities across the UK, and that the country’s cash infrastructure is sustainable for the long term.

The Bill will also enable the Payment Systems Regulator to require banks to reimburse authorised push payment (APP) scam losses, totalling hundreds of millions of pounds each year. This will ensure victims are not left paying for fraud through no fault of their own.

This protection from fraudsters is welcomed and for those readers who have not encountered APPs, they are payments taken from your bank account when fraudsters deceive individuals to send a payment under false pretences to a bank account controlled by the fraudster.

The wider elements of the Bill will cover:

  • Revoking retained EU law on financial services and replacing it with an approach to regulation that is designed for the UK. This includes the Solvency II legislation governing the regulation of insurers, which the government has committed to reform.

 

  • Updating the objectives of the financial services regulators to ensure a greater focus on growth and international competitiveness.

 

  • Reforming the rules that regulate the UK’s capital markets, the engine of the UK economy, to promote investment.

 

  • Ensuring that people across the UK continue to be able to access their own cash with ease.

 

  • Introducing additional protections for those investing or using financial products, and to make it safer and support the victims of scams.

More details will be available when the Bill is formally introduced.

Saving for a rainy day

The more draconian government interventions introduced to control the COVID outbreak have challenged all of us, businesses and individuals, to consider the notion that we can no longer rely on our jobs or businesses to effortlessly produce the income we need.

Many businesses in the hospitality and entertainment sectors had their ability to trade quashed. Lockdown meant closedown, no income. Government did step up and provide furlough grants, to support staff retention, and various other financial funding to keep businesses afloat.

What did we learn?

That COVID had two impacts, on our health and finances, and that we needed to consider the consequences of future events, even those presently unknown.

One way that we can act is to save for these rainy days. We have experience that this disruption can extend to years rather than months. In which case, what thickness of fat do we need to build on our business bones to survive these, however unlikely, restrictions?

The part planning plays

Planning can take several forms but let us consider a basic business plan. These forecasts of profitability and solvency are fixed for the year ahead and are intended to provide a benchmark to judge future results; fine while the world at large is at peace and no external conditions develop to disrupt your plans.

Which is why, post COVID experiences, as soon as external factors change, we should revisit plans and flex them to accommodate these changing factors. This process will reveal where and when your financial challenges are likely to occur – particularly dips in cash flow, profitability and working capital – and give you time to figure out strategies to minimise any damage.

Following this process, it will then be evident how much we need in our rainy-day account to meet any shortfall.

Make hay while you can

It is beyond the context of this post to dwell on these challenges, but while you are able to resume normal business, this does open up the opportunity to transfer a calculated sum into your savings account each month and gradually build reserves.

Now may be a good time to start this process.

Elastic or inelastic?

Would demand for the products or services you sell vary with price increases or decreases? This conundrum is considered by the term elasticity in economic circles – how demand changes when prices change.

If demand for your products is elastic, any change in price will have a corresponding impact in demand. For example, if you increase prices and consumers/buyers are able to delay buying – in the hope that prices will reduce or that a lower priced substitute can be found – then demand for your products will fall.

Alternatively, if demand for your products is inelastic, any change in price will have less effect on demand. For example, if you increase prices and consumers/buyers are unable to delay buying or find a lower priced substitute – then demand for your products will be maintained.

Inflation

In times when prices are been driven upwards, due to supply disruption, elasticity plays an important role in how your business profits will be affected. This is the situation we are presently facing in 2022.

If you sell items or services that have readily available substitutes or that consumers are happy to delay buying decisions, then increasing your prices to compensate for the increased costs you are having to bear will result in a loss of sales that may exaggerate profit reduction.

But if you sell products with few substitutes and buyers are not prepared to delay purchasing your services then it is more likely that buyers will be prepared to pay your price increases.

Elasticity and inflation

Which means that businesses selling products or services that are inelastic – price increases will not unduly affect demand – have a distinct advantage over businesses that sell products or services where demand is elastic.

Planning to include elasticity

If you presently market goods that are inelastic you may have inadvertently made life much easier for the maintenance of profitability as you should be able to increase prices without significant reductions in sales volumes.

Businesses whose products are elastic, price increases will reduce sales, may need to expand their range to include products with a less reactive change in volume when prices are increased.

Ironically, the sale of inelastic products fuels inflation, price increases. But businesses have a right to adapt in efforts to maintain solvency and profitability. The real culprit of the present rise in inflation is supply-side – a global shortage of computer chips for example – and not businesses seeking to exploit these challenges for their own benefit.

Investing to increase profits

The UK tax code has numerous reliefs and allowances that reduce tax when businesses invest in qualifying assets.

Some of the reliefs allow up to 100% of the invested cost to be written off against taxable profits and companies can presently write-off 130% of qualifying expenditure.

But aside from these tax incentives to invest, it is worth considering the bottom-line effect that the investment will have on business profitability.

 

Cashflow considerations

Companies, who can claim a 100% write-off for an asset purchase, will presently save £190 for every £1,000 spent – this based on corporation tax rates being 19%.

Self-employed traders will save between £200 and £450 for every £1,000 spent – based on income tax rates ranging from 20% to 45%. There may also be Class 4 NIC savings.

In both cases the cash outlay (or debt acquired to fund a purchase) exceeds any overall reduction in tax payable.

 

Bottom-line mentality

You may be tempted to upgrade an asset out of hubris. For example, part-exchange a company car. If the vehicle offers savings in running costs or enables you to increase sales and profits, then the investment – you could say – makes commercial sense.

If the payback in additional profits is less certain, then the investment return may be less certain even when after-tax savings are considered.

 

Do the math…

When making decisions on major additions or replacements of plant, vehicles or other high-value equipment, be sure to consider all the effects on your business prospects. Otherwise, your tax reductions may come at the expense of hard-won cash reserves.

We can help you crunch the numbers to see if there is an overall benefit to your business. Please call before making any significant buying decisions.

High energy industries attract increased support

The other side of the recent hikes in consumer energy costs – taking their toll on take-home pay across the UK – are the similar cost increases for industry.

Focussing on high-energy users, the government recently announced the following increased support for Energy Intensive Industries (IEE).

High energy usage businesses, such as steel and paper manufacturers, are set to receive further support for electricity costs as the government has confirmed details Friday 29 April, of the Energy Intensive Industries (EII) compensation scheme.

The scheme will also provide support for companies that manufacture batteries for electric vehicles, supporting the UK’s drive to capitalise on the global shift to greener technologies.

The scheme will be extended for a further 3 years and its budget will be more than doubled. This will help ensure the UK remains an attractive investment destination for energy intensive industries, whilst encouraging greater electrification to help cut emissions as part of the green industrial revolution across the country.

Today’s announcement will add to the more than £2 billion the government has provided since 2013 to support businesses in energy intensive sectors with the price of electricity bills.

Industry Minister Lee Rowley said:

“We want to keep the UK at the forefront of manufacturing, helping our energy intensive industries remain competitive and sustainable for the long term, and continuing to power our economy with thousands of jobs across the country.

“We are not only extending our support through the compensation scheme, by offering a greater level of compensation to eligible firms, we are delivering more relief from electricity costs for these industries.”

The scheme provides businesses with relief for the costs of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and Carbon Price Support mechanism in their electricity bills, recognising that UK industrial electricity prices are higher than those of other countries.

It will be interesting to see if the Treasury offers more support in the coming weeks for domestic consumers.

 

Dividends hit by NIC increase

Dividends are a distribution of company profits to shareholders. Historically, they have been taxed as unearned income – no National Insurance deductions.

This is still the case, but the Treasury have decided that the recent increase of 1.25% in National Insurance rates will also apply to dividends.

Since April 2016, the rates of Income Tax applicable to dividend income have been 7.5%, 32.5% and 38.1% for basic, higher and additional rate taxpayers, respectively.

Any individual who has dividend income can benefit from the dividend allowance which has been set at £2,000 since April 2018. Dividends within the allowance are not charged to tax and this will remain the case.

For 2021-22, the ordinary rate, upper rate and additional rate were 7.5%, 32.5% and 38.1% respectively. These rates increased by 1.25% to 8.75% 33.75% and 39.35% from April 2022.

The dividend trust rate of Income Tax was 38.1%, 2021-22. This also increased to 39.35% from April 2022 to remain in line with the additional rate.

Although the 1.25% increase sounds fairly insignificant, a basic rate taxpayer with £22,000 of dividend income would pay £1,750 tax in 2022-23. The equivalent tax due for 2021-22 was £1,500. The increase of £250 represents a 17% increase in tax due even though rates have only increased by 1.25 percentage points.

Director/shareholders of small companies who have adopted a high dividend, low salary approach will see continuing benefits from this strategy, but fine-tuning remuneration packages to include the new rates may be beneficial.