Small business owners may want to consider using the services of a qualified accountant after HMRC highlighted the fact that a lot of PAYE returns contain incorrect information.
According to the Revenue, over 500 PAYE returns showed that forms had an employee named A N Other. 824 employees were listed as surname “Unknown”, 572 were entered simply as X and 128 employees were named as Mr or Mrs Dummy. Furthermore, 40 people were at least 200 years because their date of birth had been entered incorrectly.
The director of customer operations at HMRC, Jim Harra, explained that the majority of employers did fill out their PAYE returns correctly. However, the ones who don’t could be causing their employees problems, such as incorrect income tax deductions. About 80% of the errors in employee information are caused by incorrect names, dates of birth or National Insurance numbers.
He went on to advise people to enter employees’ full, official name on all PAYE paperwork. First names are extremely important, especially if somebody has a common surname.
Meanwhile, the UK now has a new bank. Shawbrook Bank opened on Monday and hopes to help businesses get the funding they have been unable to secure from the UK’s largest banking institutions.
Owen Woodley, Shawbrook’s chief executive, said there is a lot of demand for small business funding and there is no doubt that the small enterprise sector is under-served.
Shawbrook is an independent firm but it has received partial backing from RBS Equity Finance. However, Woodley explained that 87% of the funds came from independent sources and the bank will be competing with RBS.
