The end of 100% equipment allowances

[cfmonk]

A reduction in certain regulations would not lead to a fall in wages for many people. I guess "better regulation" would be a more accurate way to describe my feelings.

 

I'm thinking less about employment law and perhaps more about only having to tell one government department that you want to change your registered office address, Being able to pay off your PAYE bill with your Corporation Tax Excess, PMIs on Vehicles being allowed on a mileage basis rather than being time limited etc. etc. Although being able to get rid of useless staff (not that I have any) and not be held to ransom by employees when they decide to resign (have had that one) would be nice!

[dbuckley]

Hmmm, good points and valid but I believe based on a false premise, David. Business does depend on the quality of its' workforce to a massive extent

 

Indeed, and I suspect that it is true more now than in any time in our history.

 

A goodly few decades ago we had a spread of job types that reasonably well matched the population, so there were jobs available for people of any capability or intelligence; all could make a useful contribution to society.

 

You'll doubtless recall those black and white propaganda films of the 1950s showing (then!) modern cars and kitchens, and prophesying that robots would free us all from a live of drudgery allowing us all more leisure time. Well, it happened, but not in they way those old movies showed. The robots have reduced the numbers of manual labour jobs required, and reduced them permanently. Its only because we as nation states allow low wages that Big Macs are still assembled by people, not by machines.

 

Some stuff, though, gets harder. Example: In 80s the "Big Bang" happened in the City of London. Computers were the great white hope of trading, and a BT wireman could triple his salary by leaving BT and going to the city to become a network engineer. These guys made the city work for a decade, but eventually, the new breed of network systems came along which required you knew how to make a unix workstation work, 'cos thats what OpenView ran on, and everything that was once hardware became software. Many (but by no means all) of these ex-BTers were ill equipped to deal with the wind of change. They were manaul weavers caught up in a automated loom revolution. They fell by the wayside.

 

So the upshot of what I'm saying is that businesses are needing and demanding better people to make the difference, whilst at the same time we are engineering away jobs for many of our populace in striving for efficiency and cost effectiveness.

 

So to go back to that question "Will Workers Ever Benefit from Higher Productivity", at the worker (singular) level, no they don't. An individual worker at some grade will not see his salary double because the country's productivity double. He is likely as not to be scrapped to the dole queue. However, those for those who have the right jobs, or change to the right jobs, some will benefit enormously. Far more so than the average would suggest. The system is unbalanced (some would say "unfair") and getting more so by the year.

 

There is a large school of thought that agrees with Kerry when he says "We have to share more equally or we are all doomed, Captain Mainwaring."

[Judge]

I have just come up against the same thing. My accountant told me that any purchases over £400 count as Capital Expenditure rather than a business expense and must be reclaimed over a period of years.

Which sucks because I just bought a £900 lens that I thought would come staright off my tax bill. :(

 

From HMRC site...

 

 

Capital allowances: the basics

 

Introduction

If you buy an asset - eg a car, tools, machinery or other equipment - for use in your business, you cannot deduct your expenditure on that asset from your trading profits. Instead, you may be able to claim a capital allowance for that expenditure.

 

Capital allowances are also available for certain building-related capital expenditure, for qualifying capital expenditure on qualifying research and development, for donations of used business assets to charity, and certain other capital expenditure.

 

The aim is to give tax relief for the reduction in value of qualifying assets that you buy and own for business use by letting you write off their cost against the taxable income of your business.

 

Capital Allowances are available to sole traders, self-employed persons or partnerships, as well as companies and organisations liable for Corporation Tax.

 

 

[paulears]

Judges information is exactly the same as my account told me when I started the topic, and also what she restated when signing the accounts off - 25% the first year, 18% then next etc. She didn't mention £400 however, or I may have missed that. She said already some of her very big clients have put off buying new expensive items. £100,000 worth of refrigerated truck trailers not being ordered, and the old ones carrying on in service. What happens to the people who sell the expensive kit? I theatre who have made a bit of money can buy a new sound or lighting control, but many times this is just an update, not a replacement for an unreliable one - so many companies may see little point in spending if there's no financial advantage.