Hornbeam Highlights 26

Over the last few years it has become apparent that good tax advice increasingly needs to involve financial services advice, indeed the two are inextricably bound together. For instance:

• Pensions can be used tax effectively to extract funds from Limited companies
• Having identified a potential Inheritance Tax liability, financial advice can often remove it completely
• Pension advice can reduce income tax
• Capital Gains Tax arising on the sale of a business can be avoided with good financial advice

  ....to name just a few.

About 12 months ago we took a strategic decision that Hornbeam Accountancy Services Ltd had to have a joint venture with a properly qualified and regulated firm of Independent Financial Advisers (IFAs). After setting parameters and conducting interviews we settled on The Philip Martin Partnership, whom we have known and worked with for many years.

After interminable bureaucratic hassle, Hornbeam Financial Services LLP is now registered to give financial advice:

So from now on we will be adding financial services solutions to those that we already offer in dealing with many of the problems we encounter day to day. We believe that this will improve the service that we are able to offer. If you already have an IFA we will be happy to work for them. We will give you what we believe to be best advice, but we will never be offended if you choose a different course of action.

Two short stories illuminate what we are about:
Jackie's husband has been a client for many years. When she brought the books in this year she told me he has not been able to work most of the year and is still chronically ill. This has reminded us how important it is for self-employed clients to consider income protection policies (after all I have one! - Phil).

Joe owns a very profitable business and hates paying tax. We have advised him two years running to invest in a substantial self-managed executive pension scheme. He has seemed reluctant to do so. We had a half hour chat 'out of hours' and whilst I don't think his strategy is optimal from a taxation point of view - that is the strategy we will be supporting in future.

Avoiding Scams

We have a steady trickle of 'is this a scam?' enquiries from clients including Data Protection Scams. This article from Accountancy Magazine should be read by all clients....

Failure to comply with the Data Protection Act is increasing likely to lead to fines, but those affected need to be sure that they register with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), not a bogus agency. Each month, over 200 businesses fall victim to fake agencies requesting sums of between £95 and £135.

If you receive a letter requesting more than £35 to register under the DPA it is a scam. The statutory fee for notification is only £35 a year and should only be paid to the ICO, but many businesses have fallen prey to bogus agencies: in one month alone the ICO received 1,300 enquiries from companies that had received fake letters and a year ago, two men were sentenced to a total of six and a half years at Burnley Crown Court for their part in a data protection scam which conned UK businesses out of £700,000.

Correspondence that is really from the ICO always bears the address: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire. If in doubt, you can check directly by calling the ICO notification and registration helpline on 01625 545 740.