Ten more years

In Neil Warren’s persuasive article Ten out of ten he congratulates HMRC on introducing and supporting small businesses with the VAT flat-rate scheme for the past ten years.

His positive comments make it even more shocking that according to the July 2011 discussion paper from the Office of Tax Simplification called ‘A simpler income tax for the smallest businesses’ 2010 data shows approximately 15% of eligible traders were registered for the scheme (page 32 of the paper).

That is shocking in my view even after taking into account the traders who looked at using the scheme and found it was not for them for one reason or another. Let’s hope that after reading Neil’s article that will soon change.

This depressing statistic clearly shows that any special rules for small businesses need to be introduced with proper publicity with measures in place to ensure...