Latest News

Tax team shortlisted for two awards in National Taxation Awards 2017

We are delighted to announce that our tax team has been shortlisted for two awards including ‘Best Tax Practice in a Regional Firm’ and ‘Best Tax Investigations Team’ at the National Taxation Awards 2017.

These national awards recognise the best in the taxation industry, celebrating excellence and promoting the highest standards possible.

After winning the award for ‘Best Tax Practice in a Regional Firm’ in 2015 and being a finalist in the ‘Best Tax Investigations Team’ last year, we are hoping to scoop two accolades this year.

An insight into Family Businesses

The Armstrong Watson Family Business Insight 2017 provides an in depth analysis of current trends from the results of the largest survey of its kind in the UK.  The survey collates opinions from over 400 family business owners across the country offering an awareness of the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis.

Free finance sessions for school leaders

Following on from the autumn term’s popular Considerations for Conversion series in respect of finding the right structure for your school in the future, Armstrong Watson in association with Modern Governor, Berg and C:Becs are now hosting a second series of topical school webinars between March and July which deal with crucial issues currently facing our schools.  

Introducing our new forensic team

October 2016 saw the arrival of our new forensic team which has vast experience of assisting parties with, and adding value to, a wide range of disputes, investigations and litigation-related matters. 

The team is headed by partner Matthew Geale, who specialises in a wide range of forensic matters, including commercial litigation, shareholder disputes, personal injury and intellectual property disputes, such as infringement of trademarks. 

What can Stephen Hawking tell us about business planning?

The famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist might seem an unlikely inspiration for an article about business planning. However, I recently read a quote from Stephen Hawking that reminded me of a situation facing most business owners.

The quote is:

“I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined, and that we can change nothing about it, still look both ways before they cross the street”

Automatic Enrolment are you compliant?

There are many TV and radio advertisements advising employers of their pension obligations to employees. Regulations came into force from July 2012 with the first pension, automatic enrolment obligations commencing for the largest employers, from October 2012. The smallest and new businesses, will be staging in the coming months with the larger ones having already carried out re-enrolment (every three years). But, and this is the big question, have employers being carrying out their obligations correctly? The Pensions Regulator has announced they will be commencing “spot checks”.

Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) admin burden looming?

Once again the Government is looking to meddle with SSP. It isn’t enough that small employers can no longer recover any monies towards paying employees SSP they now want to “flex” it. Under current rules, SSP is paid as long as certain criteria is met for 28 weeks, but only whilst an employee is not in work. 

Preparing for Making Tax Digital with Xero

Today, we announced jointly with Xero, the migration of several thousand internal clients from Sage onto Xero’s online platform in readiness for the roll-out of HMRC’s new Making Tax Digital rules which come into effect in 2018. The migration confirms our status as Xero’s largest UK accounting partner and one of the UK’s most digitally progressive firms.

The incentive for our uptake of online accounting software was also driven by a need to invest inour future and also to future-proof our clients’ businesses.

End of Year Certificate for the Teachers’ Pension Scheme

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has published a report on some schools and the Teachers’ Pension Scheme submissions of the End of Year Certificates.  The report shares how TPR engaged with employers to understand why they hadn’t complied with their obligations.  Unfortunately the Administrator, even after contacting three local authority schools and 40 non-local authority schools to request their data, were left with no choice but to inform TPR of their failures to submit by the due date.  It meant the Administrator couldn’t reconcile the membership and credit the contributions to the scheme f

A growing team focussed on building relationships and offering face-to-face advice

We are bucking a general trend in financial services by growing the number of face-to-face financial advisers in our team. 

We have recently taken on two additional Financial Planning Consultants to support the growing need of quality and bespoke financial planning advice to individuals and businesses in the Carlisle and North Cumbria areas. 

Steve Shovlin (seen on the right) joins Armstrong Watson Financial Planning with over 20 years’ experience in supporting and advising clients after working at both Santander and RBS locally in Carlisle.