Latest News

The view from the forensic team

Last time we were pleased to announce the arrival of our new forensic team so in this blog we thought we would give you a flavour of some of the cases they are currently working on.

Matthew Geale leads the team and specialises in claims arising from commercial litigation, intellectual property infringements, professional negligence and personal injury.

His current cases include:

New tax-free childcare scheme goes online early 2017

For a number of years now HM Revenue and Customs have tinkered with various initiatives to provide tax relief for the childcare costs incurred by families. For working parents, the relief available can be a valuable increase to their take home pay.

The Government is launching a new tax-free childcare scheme, now scheduled to be introduced early 2017. The new scheme will eventually replace the existing relief for employer supported childcare and childcare vouchers, which will be phased out.

Why clients are giving the thumbs up to cloud accounting

It was whilst I was having a coffee with a business partner recently that the subject of cloud based accounting packages once again came up. My business partner commented how more and more of his clients were presenting their accounting information using such packages.

I was quick to point out that Armstrong Watson is a Xero Platinum Partner and we have been actively encouraging clients to move on to this product for some time now as we are strong advocates of this method of maintaining accounting records.

Should I stay or should I go

For those of you who know the 80s really well like me, you could be forgiven for thinking this blurb is going to be about the fab 80s Combat Rock album by the Clash!  Now this would be a brilliant subject, but another is a tad more important. 

Many of us can’t wait to leave school and start earning the bucks, but hey, no sooner do we do that, we are wondering when we can retire!  I will leave advice on saving for a healthy retirement to our Financial planners!  But there is a lot that can happen in between.

Armstrong Watson’s Payroll Team Win at Payroll World Awards

Armstrong Watson’s Payroll and Employee services team is delighted to announce that they won the ‘Best Cross-Functional Partnership’ award at the national Payroll World Awards earlier this month. 

The award was given for the collaboration between the payroll and the IT department for efficiency savings for both Armstrong Watson and their clients in respect of automatic enrolment.  

Toby Woodhead, Business Process Analyst collected the award, along with Sophie Johnson and Payroll Director Karen Thomson.  

Armstrong Watson outgrow Northallerton high street location

Armstrong Watson has outgrown our office premises on Northallerton high street and are set to relocate to larger, newly refurbished open plan offices at Thornfield Business Park.

The move comes following the growth of the team after an increase of support to businesses in the North East and North Yorkshire. The new office space at York House Thornfield Business Park, Standard Way, Northallerton has been refitted to our exacting specification and includes new high tech meeting rooms and a modern welcoming reception area.

Family business – Looking to the future

Armstrong Watson has recently concluded a survey to help us identify the issues and opportunities facing family businesses when they decide to look to the future.  Whatever the size and structure, the main objective remains similar, with a clear focus on providing a desired lifestyle for those close family members. Family businesses are unique and there is not a magic formula to make succession easy or decide on the best exit strategy.

The future of family businesses

Family businesses have long been an important part of the UK economy, and it is undoubted they will provide the foundations for increased growth and innovation in the business marketplace for many years to come. If you talk directly to family business owners, they are frustrated by being labelled as OMB’s and SME’s, so surely now is the time to call them what they really are, owners of successful family businesses.

Making tax digital - a tax revolution?

What is it?

This has been described as the biggest change to business administration since the introduction of VAT in 1973. HMRC has issued consultation documents which will abolish the annual routine of completing a Self Assessment Tax Return. Instead information will be submitted to a Personal Tax Account throughout the year.

State Pension impacts for men and women

In last month’s edition, our article titled: Getting your state pension forecast proved very popular, so we wanted to explore this topical subject further.

For many, the state pension alone will not be enough to fund a comfortable retirement lifestyle, but how much you need is down to each individual. Here we look at the differences in State Pension entitlement for men and women dependent upon age.