HM Revenue & Customs re-organisation of Corporation Tax work

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is currently reorganising the way it handles Corporation Tax work in local offices.

During July the Corporation Tax records of companies and organisations currently dealt with by offices in Wrexham and Swansea (that is those reference numbers prefixed by 793 and 700) will transfer to:

HM Revenue and Customs
Local Compliance
CT Operations South Wales
Ty Glas
Llanishen
Cardiff
CF14 5FP

Telephone: 02920 325003 – please do not use this number for any other queries.

You will shortly receive a note on form CT 210 confirming these details.

You may receive notification of this change even if your company or organisation is currently dormant. This is because HMRC want you to know which office to contact should your circumstances change.

Payments Council Sets a Time Frame for Withdrawing the Guarantee Scheme for Cheques

The Payments Council has today announced that following a full stakeholder review and detailed research, it believes that use of the Cheque Guarantee Card Scheme is in terminal decline and that this needs to be managed to provide clarity and certainty for users and acceptors. It has therefore taken the decision to set a timescale for managing the decline of guaranteed cheques and ultimately to close the Scheme. The Council’s review has determined that a realistic timescale for withdrawing the Scheme is two years: this is to ensure that the remaining users and acceptors have full information about the available alternatives. This means that the earliest the Scheme will close is mid-2011.

The Cheque Guarantee Card Scheme is the central UK Scheme that sets the rules for the use and acceptance of guaranteed cheques and that uses a depiction of Shakespeare on participating plastic cards as a common identifier.

The Payments Council’s decision follows extensive consultation with consumers and businesses that still use and accept guaranteed cheques to understand why they still use them and to ensure alternatives exist. The Council believes that alternatives to the guaranteed cheque exist and are widely available, and that a well-planned withdrawal of the Scheme will not cause any significant problems for users or acceptors. The Payments Council’s full report is available from www.paymentscouncil.org.uk.

Key facts include:

• The use of guaranteed cheques is in rapid decline with volumes down a third in the last year and by 70% in the past five years.
• Last year, of the 1,400 million cheque transactions, just under 7%, or 95 million were supported by a cheque guarantee card; the number is falling rapidly. Four million consumers say they still use guaranteed cheques regularly but in many cases the guarantee function is not an essential part of the transaction.
• Over 99% of the 59.9 million cheque guarantee cards still in issue are also either debit or credit cards; the vast majority being debit cards which, of course, provide an alternative and widely-accepted means of payment.
• In 2008, losses totalling £43 million were reported as a result of cheque guarantee card misuse.
• Most major high street retailers no longer accept cheques as a form of payment.
• The average transaction value of a personal cheque is £267. The maximum guarantee limit is £250, with 88% of all cards having a limit of £100 or under.
• In the research conducted as part of the Payments Council review of the Scheme, only a quarter of all businesses said that they had received a guaranteed cheque in the previous six months.

The payments industry will now need to confirm a viable date for closing the Scheme and for communicating and managing this process with all users and acceptors; remaining throughout in close consultation with the Payments Council.

Importantly this decision does not mean that cheques cannot continue to be used.. Consumers will still be able to write cheques and businesses can continue to accept them even after the Scheme’s withdrawal. This decision does mean that some acceptors may want to plan to accept alternatives to cheques in the future, if they already don’t accept alternative payments.

The Payments Council identified as one of its priorities an objective and transparent review of the future of the Cheque Guarantee Card Scheme in the National Payments Plan. This was an entirely separate exercise from its major review of whether a date should be set for the central cheque clearing to be closed: the Council is due to report on this by the end of this year. Whilst it’s generally accepted that cheques are in terminal decline and that managing the process is preferred by all parties, the Payments Council has made it clear that a date for closing the cheque clearing cannot be set until it is confident that alternatives for the vast majority of current cheques uses have been identified and that these will be both accessible and acceptable to users.

Brian Pomeroy, Chairman of the Payments Council comments, “The Payments Council undertook an objective review of the Cheque Guarantee Card Scheme as one of the key priorities identified in the UK’s first National Payments Plan. The underlying principle of the Plan is to forge strategic change and innovation in the payments arena through active consultation with external stakeholders - rather than allowing the payments industry to be sole arbiter.

“In keeping with this aim, our review of the Cheque Guarantee Card Scheme has been extensive, and our published report demonstrates the scope and scale of the consultation and analysis undertaken: it sets out all the evidence, including the cost-benefit case, that the Payments Council Board reviewed before taking its decision. We went to great lengths to listen to the views of all users and acceptors of guaranteed cheques and have only made the decision to withdraw the Scheme after satisfying ourselves that no group will be unfairly affected or find that there is no means of making a payment. Having objectively considered the views and interests of all parties, we believe the aim should be to close the Scheme in an orderly manner. This is preferable to the alternative of doing nothing, which would run the risk of further piecemeal withdrawal of cheque guarantee functionality by card issuers and reduction in acceptance by retailers, which could rapidly lead to consumer and acceptor confusion about the scope of the Scheme and a general loss of confidence.”

Zoddy Tattoos Testimonial

Natalie Randall - Business Owner - Zoddy Tattoos, Didcot, Oxfordshire

I just wanted to say a huge massive thnx for all your help and hard work. You have been great and worked so so so hard to help me. The website and business cards are awesome and we are very pleased. They both look so professional and are a big help to get us on our way for along successful journey at Zoddy’s. Can’t thank you both enough.

www.zoddytattoos.co.uk

Moving Paradigms Limited Testimonial

Ian Robertson - Director - Moving Paradigms Ltd, Oxfordshire

Getting a company logo, business cards, website and email address up and running was not something I had done before and Jason and the Davenports team helped make it straightforward and simple for me (a ‘non-IT’ person!). I am very pleased with the quality of what they have produced.

www.movingparadigms.co.uk

Save Money on Business Stationery Today!

Davenports now offers a range of business printing and promotional material through their website.

Click here to get a Quote for:

• Business Cards
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Davenports - Helping you through the economic crisis

Bank of England Maintains Bank Rate at 0.5% and Continues with £125 Billion Asset Purchase Programme

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee today voted to maintain the official Bank Rate paid on commercial bank reserves at 0.5%. The Committee also voted to continue with its programme of asset purchases totalling £125 billion financed by the issuance of central bank reserves.

Boulton and Watt: the New Faces on £50 Banknotes

The renowned 18th century business partnership of entrepreneur Matthew Boulton and engineer James Watt provides the historical figures to be portrayed on the Bank of England’s redesigned £50 banknotes. Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, made the announcement this evening when he opened a new exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: ‘Matthew Boulton: Selling what all the world desires’.

Commenting on the choice, the Governor said, “Just as the Bank of England plays an essential role in the economy as the United Kingdom’s central bank, so too did Boulton and Watt’s steam engines and their many other innovations as essential factors in the nation’s Industrial Revolution. So many of the advantages society now enjoys are due in large part to the vital role of engineering and the brilliance and foresight of people such as Boulton and Watt whose development and refinement of steam engines gave an incredible boost to the efficiency of industry.”

“The unique and rare opportunity that the Bank has through its banknotes to acknowledge and promote awareness of our nation’s heritage of artistic, social and scientific endeavour is an honour for us. The Bank’s choice of Boulton and Watt, a reminder of the invaluable contribution from engineering and the entrepreneurial spirit to the advancement of society, I think, well reflects this.”

The Boulton and Watt £50 banknote, to be launched in around eighteen months time, will be the second note in the Series F ‘family’which began with the introduction of the Adam Smith £20 note in 2007. Therefore its overall appearance will be similar. But for the first time two portraits will appear together on the reverse of the note, those of Boulton and Watt, along with the image of a steam engine and the Soho (Birmingham) Manufactory. As with the Adam Smith £20 banknote however, continuity is provided with the current portrait of Her Majesty The Queen, which was first used in 1990 and which will be retained on the front of the note. Further details of the design and the range of security features to be included on the new note will be revealed when the new note is launched, within a full promotion and awareness campaign.

Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s Executive Director – Banking Services and Chief Cashier, whose signature appears on Bank of England banknotes, also attended the Birmingham exhibition opening. Commenting on the plans for the new £50 banknote, he said, “Not only am I delighted with the proposed design for the banknote but I am pleased too that the Bank has the opportunity again to introduce advances in anti-counterfeiting measures which have come on stream.”

As new-design banknotes are introduced so the notes they replace are withdrawn - although they can always be exchanged at the Bank of England for their face value. The Boulton and Watt £50 banknote will therefore circulate in tandem with the current £50 banknote first introduced in 1994. This earlier note, which features Sir John Houblon, the first Governor of the Bank of England, will be gradually withdrawn from circulation with the final date for its status as legal tender to be announced in due course.

Notes

The design includes separate portraits of Boulton and Watt, developed from images held by the Bank of England (Bank of England copyright). The image of the Soho Manufactory, where Boulton produced small metalware and which became the first steam-powered mint and another, of the Whitbread steam engine designed by Boulton and Watt and installed by Samuel Whitbread in his London brewery, are worked from images owned by Birmingham City Council. Permission to use these two images was kindly given by the Council, and they are therefore the copyright of Birmingham City Council.

The news release, including the full text of the Governor’s opening remarks, will be available after 19:00 hours on the website at http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/news/2009/index.htm

The Boulton and Watt £50 is the second in Series F with the Adam Smith £20 the first (2007). The Houblon Series E was introduced in 1994. The only previous £50 banknote design was the Wren banknote, introduced in 1981 and withdrawn from circulation in 1996. Prior to this there was a white £50 in issue between 1725 and 1943.

At the end of December 2008 there were some 171 million (170,846,025) £50 banknotes in circulation (6.7% of total notes by volume, 18.8% by value); over the whole of 2008 the average figures were 157 million (156,987,390) £50 notes (6.7% of total notes by volume, 18.9% by value).

Boulton and Watt – a brief background

Matthew Boulton (1728-1809) Industrialist and Entrepreneur

Matthew Boulton was a leading innovating entrepreneur of the Industrial Revolution whose commercial success contributed greatly to the emergence of Birmingham as a thriving industrial centre with an international reputation.

On leaving school he worked in his father’s factory which he inherited in 1759. The factory operated in the ‘toy’ trade of Birmingham, making buckles for shoes and knee-breeches and in 1760, being by then regarded as one of the most eminent and astute Birmingham manufacturers, he represented the buckle makers of Birmingham, Warwick and Wolverhampton before a House of Commons committee. In order to expand his business he had a new factory called the ‘Soho Manufactory’ built on Handsworth Heath. It became the focus of his activities and a showpiece.

Although concerned at various times with the manufacture of buckles, buttons, silverware in Sheffield plate (a sheet of silver fused to one of copper) and ormolu (gilded brass) ornaments, he was particularly enthused by and was later to become renowned in two fields of activity: the development, production and sale of steam engines and the minting of coins.

In 1775 Boulton went into partnership with James Watt (1736-1819) whose improvements to steam engine design had led to greater efficiency and cheaper running costs. Initially the market for their engines was in the mines of Cornwall but Boulton, spotting the potential in the cotton spinning industry, encouraged Watt to develop an engine suitable for that purpose. By 1800 Boulton was selling far more of this type of engine than the earlier design and the market had become worldwide.

In order to augment the supply of coin provided by the Royal Mint, Boulton established the Soho Mint, and it was there, using steam-driven machinery, that coinage of the highest quality was produced. High definition and high relief together with a truly consistent appearance was now possible using the power of steam.

His lively intellectual curiosity - he was a prominent member of the Lunar Society - had led him to examine the relationship between science and industry and to focus on the organisation of production. The partnership with Watt was not simply that of entrepreneur and inventor: Boulton made many suggestions for improving Watt’s engines and his enterprises made a huge contribution to the progress of the Industrial Revolution.

James Watt (1736-1819) Engineer and Scientist

James Watt was the great improver, not the inventor, of the steam engine. While repairing a Newcomen steam engine he was struck by the considerable steam wastage inherent in its design and realised that it could be made more efficient by condensing the spent steam in a separate chamber thereby allowing the cylinder to remain hot. Furthermore, less fuel would be needed to generate the steam. Progress in its development was slow until he entered into partnership with Matthew Boulton in 1775.

Watt was also involved in several civil engineering projects, the most significant of which was a survey and estimate in 1773 for a canal between Fort William and Inverness. The canal was constructed in the early 19th century and named the Caledonian Canal.
He joined the Lunar Society of Birmingham (to which Matthew Boulton also belonged) which had fourteen members, several of whom were destined to become Fellows of the Royal Society. The principle behind such literary and philosophical societies was that self-improvement could be achieved through conversation. In Watt’s case he was, of course, interested in the measurement of heat, the theory of latent heat and the expansive properties of steam.

The great market for steam engines was the textile industry and Boulton urged Watt to develop an engine suitable for this purpose, which he did in 1774 although it was not patented until 1781.

Watt continued inventing until the end of his life, particularly focusing his energies on innovations that would allow the power from the engines to be harnessed more effectively. He introduced the term ‘horsepower’ and the metric unit of power is named after him.