VATExchange.co.uk

HMRC has recently issued SIVA Notice 1, which explains the rules for the Simplified VAT Accounting Scheme. This is a new notice although the scheme itself is not new, but there has never been a dedicated notice about the scheme.

SIVA

The scheme provides a cash benefit for businesses who already operate or are applying to operate the duty deferment import scheme where payment of import VAT and duty is deferred until the month following entry of the goods into the UK. The duty deferment scheme itself provides a very useful cashflow benefit but the downside is that in order to operate the scheme, the business has to provide a financial guarantee from its bank which is sufficient to cover the normal monthly VAT and duty bill. Financial guarantees of this kind normally form part of the businesses’ overdraft facility.

What SIVA does is to allow the business to reduce the level of guarantee required to cover the duty element only of the monthly bill, thus reducing the proportion of the businesses’ overdraft that is used. Businesses normally have to be registered for VAT for 3 years and satisfy certain compliance criteria to be allowed to use the scheme, but otherwise application is relatively straightforward.

This is a really useful scheme and I’d certainly suggest that any business who could benefit checks out the application criteria and considers applying.

The £26 Woman Tax

An update for any of you who read my rant last week about the inequity of having to provide documentary evidence to prove that I am myself because I changed my name on marriage. Despite spending literally hours searching through boxes of papers, I simply couldn’t find my birth certificate. I’ve moved house twice and divorced once in the past 5 years each of which events required significant down-sizing, getting rid of junk and re-organising personal affairs. I was sure that the birth certificate would be in one of two places but I just can’t find it. I’ll probably find it in 6 months time somewhere “safe” when I’m looking for something else entirely.

So where does the £26 come in? Well this is what it costs to get an “urgent” copy of the certificate. “Urgent” meaning that they will post it out within 2 working days. I could have gone for the slower option which costs £10 but then it wouldn’t get here for over 2 weeks and by then it will be Christmas week so I’d end up waiting until the new year to get my life sorted out.

I know it’s not the end of the world and hopefully everything will be sorted soon once I’ve got everything pulled together. But it still does my head in that even with all the technical resources we have available as a society, women still have to prove that they are who they say they are by providing documentary evidence – surely a real throw-back to the nineteenth century! Dickens would surely approve!

Anyway, soapbox away and I hope that we all have a good week ahead.

Marie