A Tinder-inspired app is helping farmers match up potential partners for their cattle. Called “Tudder” – a mix of dating app Tinder and udder – it lets farmers swipe right on cattle they like the look of.

They are then directed to a page on the SellMyLivestock website, where they can browse more pictures and data about the animals before deciding whether to buy.

Valuable information is available on matters like milk yield and protein content, or calving potential, explained Doug Bairner, CEO of Hectare Agritech which runs SellMyLivestock (SML) and Graindex, a UK-based online agritech trading platform.

“Matching livestock online is even easier than it is to match humans because there’s a huge amount of data that sits behind these wonderful animals that predicts what their offspring will be,” he said.

Launched just in time for Valentine’s Day, the makers believer Tudder is the first ever matchmaking app for livestock.

There are separate penalties for filing a late return and for late payment of taxes owed. If you are late with both the return and tax owing, you will be liable for penalties and charges on both.

In addition HMRC will charge interest at 3.25% on any tax owing and on the penalties and charges incurred as a result of the late payment of tax owed.

Please note, if the taxpayer makes a ‘time to pay agreement’ with HMRC, the penalty could be suspended, however the taxpayer will become liable to the penalty if the suspension agreement is broken.

* Subject to multi-penalty rule paragraph 17(3) of Sch FA 2009

Applying for a mortgage is always a stressful time, however the right help and advice from a good mortgage broker can make a lot of the worries disappear.

One of our clients (let’s call him X) contacted us as he was paying a staggering £3,400 per month for his current mortgage.  He had £35,000 remaining and that was due to be repaid in less than 18 months and he feared that he was balancing on the cliff edge as he was unable to continue making these huge payments. In addition he had debts totalling £43,000 on unsecured facilities which were costing him a further £1180 per month.

His joint income with his wife was approximately £70,000 (before tax) and he was just managing to get through the month although often he was increasing his unsecured debt just to make ends meet.

We immediately put X in touch with Arieh Zucker of Windfall Finance in order for Arieh to help him refinance the loans.

X had applied to one of the High Street lenders and although they used Experian to check his credit rating and he achieved a score of 977/999, they just didn’t like the profile. There is a general aversion in the market towards excessive debt consolidation especially when the debt to income ratio is so high. In addition, X’s age was against him as he is over 65 and by this point, lenders are already looking for mortgages to be repaid.

Arieh was able to arrange a £90,000 mortgage for X bringing down his monthly cost of servicing the debt from £4580 to £1595. The £90,000 enabled X to repay all his unsecured debts and do some essential repairs to his house with the balance of the funds. The £1595 monthly payment was on a repayment mortgage over five years during which X still expects to work and, during this time, the payment would be very manageable compared to what was being paid previously.

The transaction took 12 days from submission of the application to completion and our client has expressed his appreciation and gratitude for the excellent advice and service received.

We have developed a close relationship with Windfall Finance so that you can draw on their experience and expertise to meet all of your mortgage needs.

Please contact Jeremy De Lord at Cogent on 020 8952 2234 for further details. You may receive preferential rates from Windfall Finance if you are a client of ours.

This article has been extracted from this month’s HMRC Employers Bulletin for your information:

We would like to take the opportunity to remind all parents of the importance of making a claim for child benefit regardless of income levels to make sure they don’t miss out on some important benefits for them and their child.

If parents are part of a couple and one of them works and pays National
Insurance contributions (NICs) and the other one stays at home to care for a child, the person who is not paying NICs can protect their State Pension by completing the Child Benefit form. Completing the form also helps a child to automatically get their National Insurance Number at age 16.

For parents where one or both have an individual income of more than £50,000, they may be liable for the High Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBC), a tax charge on the Child Benefit payments received. The person who pays the tax charge could be different to the person receiving payments. Some people may decide not to receive the payments to avoid paying the charge.

Either way, it is important that people fill in and submit the Child Benefit form, even if they decide not to take Child Benefit payments, in order to protect their entitlement to the State Pension and to help their child receive their National Insurance Number at age 16.

If you and your partner both have an individual income of less than £50,000
You will not need to pay the tax charge. If your or your partner’s income goes over £50,000 in any year, check if you have to pay the tax charge https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit-tax-calculator

The person with the highest income has income between £50,000-£60,000
If you or your partner decide to get Child Benefit payments, the person with the higher income must notify HMRC by registering for Self-Assessment to pay the tax charge each year. It will be less than the amount of the Child Benefit you get. The tax charge will not apply if you decide not to get Child Benefit payments (select “no” on question 68).

The person with the highest income has income of more than £60,000
If you or your partner decide to get Child Benefit payments, the person with the higher income must notify HMRC by registering for Self-Assessment to pay the tax charge each year. It will be the same as the amount of the Child Benefit you get. The tax charge will not apply if you decide not to get Child Benefit payments (select “no” on question 68).

More information on Child Benefit and the High Income Child Benefit Charge can be
found on GOV.UK https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit
and https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit-tax-charge

Every year a host of individuals across the country who fail to fill in their self-assessment tax return on time manage to come up with the weirdest excuses as to why.

These excuses can be so bizarre that it’s questionable whether they are desperate attempts to find a genuine excuse or some kind of expensive prank.

Here are five that really take the cake:

1. My mother-in-law is a witch and put a curse on me.
2. I’m too short to reach the post box.
3. I was just too busy – my first maid left, my second maid stole from me, and my third maid was very slow to learn.
4. Our junior member of staff registered a client for self-assessment by mistake because they were not wearing their glasses.
5. My boiler had broken and my fingers were too cold to type.

Expenses are a guaranteed part of owning a business, which is why HMRC allow for tax breaks depending on how much you’ve spent and what you’ve spent it on. Some people like to take advantage of that though and claim on items that seem as though they’re a little more for pleasure than business.

Here are five pleasure expenses:

1. A carpenter claiming £900 for a 55-inch TV and sound bar to help them price their jobs.
2. £40 on extra woolly underwear, for five years.
3. £756 for pet dog insurance.
4. A music subscription, to listen to music while working.
5. A family holiday to Nigeria.

The excuses and expenses listed were all rejected by HMRC. Genuine excuses will be treated leniently, however, as fines are more directed at those that fail to submit their tax returns consistently – this doesn’t mean that you can avoid fines by having a good excuse though.

A group of archaeologists working alongside the A14 have found what is believed to be the first beer brewed in the UK while working on a project to widen a major road.

The group estimated the discovery is from as far back as 400BC after finding charred residue that is believed to be from the beer making process.

Highways England Archaeology Lead on the project, Dr Steve Sherlock,
has said: “It’s a well-known fact that ancient populations used the beer-making process to purify water and create a safe source of hydration.

“But this is potentially the earliest physical evidence of that process taking place in the UK.”

The tiny fragments of residue were found by one of the 250 archaeologists on the MOLA Headland Infrastructure project, Lara Gonzalez, who stated: “I knew when I looked at these tiny fragments under the microscope that I had something special.”

Ancient beer isn’t the only thing that’s been found on the project – prehistoric burial grounds, a medieval village, and a woolly mammoth tusk were also discovered.

All the professional blogs are telling us that we have to inform you all about Making Tax Digital (MTD). Let me start by saying that we have a smooth compliant system already in place and, at this point in time, there is nothing that you need to do other than operate as normal.

Let me now tell you a little bit of the background and the work that we and our software suppliers have put into giving you such a smooth ride…

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) have decided to standardise the preparation, maintenance, submission and retention of accounting records in an electronic digital format and more or less disallow manual intervention in the process after the initial accounting entries are made and the submissions completed.

From the 1 April 2019, for the majority of people, VAT records will need to be kept in this new format and paper accounting records will cease to meet legal requirements in tax legislation. This means that when you send in the original accounting records such as timesheets and expenses records, they are entered into the core accounting spreadsheets and, after relevant reconciliations are done, they are entered by us via an HMRC API (Application Programming Interfaces platform) and onto the HMRC server, prompting a confirmation of receipt to us.

This is the start of the new digital accounts plans set out by HMRC, starting with VAT in April 2019 for most companies, continuing to other taxes by 2020.

In summary, you do not have to worry about this at all – we have it sorted.

Sam Heller FCA

The government’s scheme to apply Off-Payroll rules to the private sector has put 85 MPs in danger of losing their seats at the next general election, unless they choose to take sides with contractors and dispute the scheme.

A survey of 2,000 contractors suggested that 49 per cent of contractors would not support their local MP in the event of them campaigning for the extension of Off-Payroll rules.

The Office for National Statistics took the results of this survey along with the amount of self-employed voters in each region to calculate how much of an impact this would have on overall election results. The 85 MPs identified are in danger of losing their seats if the calculations are accurate, including 40 Conservative MPs and 24 Labour MPs.

Experts have suggested that the inability to secure votes from self-employed individuals would “prove catastrophic” for those that they vote against. While those that the self-employed individuals choose to vote for could gain from it immensely. MPs in “precarious positions” should ensure they are able to win over contractors’ votes in order to keep their seats.

It has also been suggested that if the findings are correct then Labour is set to be in a much stronger position as contractors vote for them instead of the Conservative MP they would have otherwise voted for, thus giving Labour more seats in parliament.

With the amount of self-employed people growing each year, it is important for politicians not to ignore their needs if they want to stay in a strong political position.

Jon Thompson, the Chief Executive of HMRC has come under scrutiny after his knighthood was announced in the New Year’s Honours List. Prior to taking over at HMRC in 2016, Thompson served as the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence for three years, he has amassed a total of 30 years public service.

Thompson was the ring leader for HMRC’s IR35 reformation in the public sector in 2017, taking a similar role for the impending expansion of Off-Payroll rules to the private sector.

Upon receiving the honour, Thompson commended the “wealth of talented” civil service workers possess and the pride he feels in having dedicated the majority of his career working alongside them.

The honour was perhaps most disputed by contractors, with one anonymous worker calling IR35 a “shambles.” The same worker brought Thompson’s leadership skills in to question by comparing their job with Thompson’s, stating that they would have been fired had they led a project in the same way.

Experts in the tax industry also disagreed with Thompson receiving the honour, having been quoted as saying the award is “over the top” following reports of HMRC treating taxpayers unfairly and being aggressive.

Although Thompson was honoured for the longevity of his public service, the general consensus among contractors appears to be that the failure of retrospective tax alone should have prevented him from receiving such a prestigious title.