VAT, TAX AND NATIONAL INSURANCE

• Tax is something which you may pay which is demanded by the government. It is usually involuntary. It is used to enforce government activities
• VAT is a certain amount of money added to a product. The VAT is set by how much the product took to make in the production stage. You pay this to the person which you bought the product off.
• You pay national insurance to quality for certain benefits such as your pension. You only pay national insurance if you are over the age of 16 and you are earning a certain amount of money each week. You pay this to the government.

Will or tax it all depends on how much you earn yearly. This amount to how much tax that you pay. “People with taxable income up to £31,785 are basic-rate taxpayers and pay tax at 20% (with £10,600 personal allowance” Reference

The amount of VAT that you pay is depending on what product that you purchase and how much it cost the manufacturer to create that product to be sold.

To pay national insurance you have to be earning over £155 a week or self employed and making a profit of £5,965 or more each year. You also need a national insurance number. This protects your national insurance record.

If you do not end up paying your TAX then you could be jailed for Tax evasion because it is illegal to avoid paying your tax or sometimes you can get off lightly by paying a fine depending on the severity of the case in the first place 

 

Usually you will have to pay a certain amount of tax depending on how much money that you may earn and the standard personal allowance before you even pay tax is usually £11,000 and this is the amount of money that you can earn without paying tax on the money that you earn. 

REGULATIONS

Regulations are things such as health and safety, Data protection and insurance and
many more. These are used to regulate the working place and work in general. Health and safety is 
probably one of the most important ones which is used in the work place because it is vital to 
keeping your employees safe and you are obligated to have a certain level of health and safety in your
work place 

Also insurance plays a big part in health and safety and the reason behind that is because if someone
gets injured then you have that in place which may protect you and the company depending who is at
fault in that case. If the company is at fault they may have to pay your medical bills and pay you
more money because they were the reason you were injured. The amount you get varies on the
severity of the act which happened

REFERENCE

Usually when you start a job the employee must give you training in health and safety in that
working area and if they do not it could backfire if that person gets hurt because they could sue you
for health and safety so doing this is a must

They also have to provide you with equipment that may keep you safe and that equipment has to be
looked after correctly in order for it to viable

As a employee there is a few things that you have to do yourself and these are things such as
following the health and safety that you were given in the first place and take care of your own
health and your fellow workers

REFERENCE 

Data protection is pretty much protecting peoples personal information and in this case it is
protecting your employees and as an employer you have to protect your employees  information
and the only way you are allowed to actually show this information is if it is used in a lawful
purpose and you also have to make sure the data you have is up to date to avoid any problems that
may appear if you do not.

"Q If I want to collect or use information about job applicants, what must I do? 
• Make sure that when you place a recruitment advert you identify your organisation properly – people should know who they are applying to. If you are using a recruitment agency, make sure the agency identifies itself. 
• Use the information you collect for recruitment or selection only. If you are going to use the information for any purpose that goes beyond this, such as to add names to your company’s marketing list, you must explain this clearly. 
• Ensure that those involved in recruitment and selection are aware that data protection rules apply and that they must handle personal information with respect. 
• Do not collect more personal information than you need. It is a breach of data protection rules to collect personal information that is irrelevant or excessive. Design your application forms with this in mind. 
 Do not collect from all applicants information that you only need from the person that you go on to appoint, such as banking details, or information you only need from applicants for particular jobs, such as details of motoring offences." REFERENCE 

ÓHealth & Safety

ÓInsurance

ÓContracts

ÓSoftware and IT licences

ÓEmployment Law

ÓRegulatory bodies

ÓIntellectual property protection

ÓData Protection

Credit Control

What is credit control?


It is basically what you do with the money that you have. For example it is used to pay people in different ways such as if you own a company you will pay your suppliers with it but they also need solvency to survive and this is being able to meet long term obligation with other companies and so on for the future but you will also should have liquidity and that is being able to make short term obligations. These are the two things that you will need to make your company thrive.

The risks and what happens if not used properly? 

Such risks you could come across is a company that is not what I said above and that is solvency and liquidity kind of company and if you come across something like that then you may not want to work with them for multiple reasons and one of them reasons is that can they provide the payments that you have agreed to in time because if they cant do that then it may put strain on the professional relationship and a strain on the deal it self.

Also has the company got good credit for you to fit in. Can they support the amount that you may need monthly. In this document it says has the company got good enough credit for you to have a certain amount of invoices each month and if the company can not afford what you want then you may need to cut down your payment terms.These are the kind of outcomes you may get if credit control is not used properly

How do you ensure you are paid in time? 

You can ensure you are paid on time is by making sure you have contact with your client through mobile or email and if you have this you can confirm the invoice directly with them to make sure there is no problems. You can also hire someone or a company to monitor your credit control or you can do it yourself by downloading a programme.

External and Internal Credit control system

Internal credit control is pretty much the money that comes into your business and it is a method that is used to make sure everything goes smoothly in your business and how it does that is by showing the true cost of everything and the costs on the side are the external costs which you don't see which is paid by society. As an example, if you own a car you are paying for things such as petrol and this is an external cost and the car is the internal cost because that is taken into account. This works the same in businesses, you may be paying an external cost after  you have paid the internal cost and that shows the true market price of the item  -reference

You can control your money by monitoring what goes in and out of your company and also by monitoring the stocks and assets you may own because if prices dip then you can sell before hand so you can get some what of a profit.


The kind of positives you may have with internal credit control is things such as it will help you achieve your objective because all the information you are getting is 100% correct and it safeguards your assets.

The kind of things that can go wrong if you do not control your costs is you can go into debt overtime because you are not looking at what goes in and out of your business and therefore you can fall into debt.

External Credit Control 

External credit control is pretty much working with people outside of your company and making sure you both reach some kind of deal that works for both parties and the way you can do this is by seeing how bad/good the credit is of who you are working with and from that you can make a judgement on if you should be working with them because if they have bad credit

If you are going to work with someone then you should probably look at their invoices to see how good their credit control is before you decide to jump into some sort of investment with them because if they happen to have bad credit control then you might be taking a risk of going bankrupt.

You could also run the risk of not having payments in on time and that can create tension within the partnership between both sides of the party.

Financing your company 

There is many different ways that you can finance your business such as bank loans that you may get that will involve getting a certain amount of money that you could use to kick start your business but when you get a bank loan of something such as £5,000 you may have to pay an extra £5,000 back in a certain amount of years. It varies depending on the deal you have made and the interest rate. Also if you do not pay it back you may lose your business and other assets you may own in some cases

In some cases you may be able to finance your business just by saving you may have saved up and a lot of people may go this way so they do not get into any kind of debt due to a bank loan or in some cases you can put some of your assets on the line and if you do not reach the agreed amount with a company or person you are working with within a certain period they may be able to take them assets off you.

• The legal status of small businesses i.e. sole trader, partnership

• The legal aspects of small business i.e. laws, regulations, health and safety

• The tax liabilities of small businesses i.e. how much tax do you need to pay, who do you pay it to?               

• Sources of finance for small businesses i.e. business loans, public funding etc.

• Financial systems suitable from small businesses i.e. software accounting systems, record keeping.

• How to control credit i.e. internal or external credit control system.

Evidence:

Please provide a research log and print outs from all of your research including annotations of your findings          

The finished work should be submitted to your tutor.

Legal and financial aspects

The legal status of small businesses such as sole trader, partnership 

http://accounting-simplified.com/audit/risk-assessment/audit-risk-business-risk.html
http://hwchamber.co.uk/support/advice/starting-a-business/legal-status-of-your-business

For example you can have sole traders and these are the people who may own a business to their self and no one else owns any part of the company so the money that they earn goes straight to them and no one else takes any of the money.

An example of a sole trader could be someone such as a photographer and the reason they can a sole trader is because they can do projects and sell them under their name so no one else gets any of the profit except the creator

The kind of advantages and disadvantages that you may get as a sole trader is aspects such as you have control over your own business because you are the owner of it so every that happens with that company is your responsibility and this can be a good thing or a bad thing and the reason this is, is because the company depends on your skill set and if it does not fit the kind of company that you own then you may not see as much successful so you need to have a skill set that fits the company that you own.

For example if you own a company that makes Music videos for people who may want to hire you, you will not have to use business audits and business audits are external companies who you may hire and they will look at your income, how much you earn and how much you are losing in total and so on but because you are a sole trader you do not really need to use this because you can do it yourself because all the profit of the company is going straight you and no one else so you should know how much is going in and out of the companies bank account and they may also guide you on what to do if they discover bad results.

As an example, the situation with Energy PLC which is a gas company. There was damages to one of the pipelines that they owned and in this situation they had to bring in the CFO (Chief Financial Manager) because they needed a solution because it lowered the quality of gas to that community and the solution that the CFO came up with was that they did another drill exploratory well in order to improve the quality and quantity of gas in that community and the risk which was took was if the drilling would be successful for them to gain profit to increase the shares from these exploratory wells. (Reference)

Funding for new buisnesses

What is a financial system and why do we need it for business?

We need financial systems in business for multiple reasons such as you need them for your business to stay in a good financial position in order to invest into other companies and lend money to other companies to get paid back double for example. It is basically all kind of financial situations are in the financial system

"BREAKING DOWN 'Financial System'

There are multiple components making up the financial system of different levels: Within a firm, the financial system encompasses all aspects of finances. For example, it would include accounting measures, revenue and expense schedules, wages and balance sheet verification. Regional financial systems would include banks and other financial institutions, financial markets, financial services In a global view, financial systems would include the International Monetary Fund, central banks, World Bank and major banks that practice overseas lending."

Can you provide three examples of financial systems to support small businesses?

There is apps that small businesses can use to support them in the financial system area such as the app this one through this LINK. You can also use sites that may help you such as this size here if you click on this LINK. Lastly you can use online sites that you may give you tips on how to control your financial issues for your company through this LINK

How do financial systems impact on business?

They can  affect your business in a huge way because if you have no idea how it works then your business might not succeed as much as it would if you knew what you are doing because you need to know how to trade money and invest it into new projects and other companies and if you have no idea what you are doing you might make bad financial mistakes.

They will also keep track of what you are buying and what you are selling so you can have a good idea of how much you are spending and how much that you are getting back. It will allow you to set up a budget so you stay financially stable

They can also be  a lot more time efficient if you run a busy company or not because you can do your financial information such as wages and your income and loss whilst you are out on a phone or on a computer by yourself.

or in some cases you can hire someone if you have the money to do so, to actually do your financial part of the business that you may or may not have time for