Managing Tenancy Deposits - The Importance of Inventories

April 2007 – Issue 18

==========================================================
Download the LandlordZONE Newsletter

Landlords and agents are free to decide whether to take deposits or not, but if they do they must protect them under one of the new schemes.

These schemes were brought in after lobbying pressure from government backbenchers and others (Shelter & CAB) despite a government trial & report concluding that legislative intervention was not needed.

The schemes are likely to be controversial and it will be some time before we know their full implications: the practical difficulties involved in working the schemes, the effectiveness of the ADR systems and their full impact on the residential letting market.

Continue reading Managing Tenancy Deposits - The Importance of Inventories…

Budget Report 2007 supplied by Carl Baley BSc ACA of Taxcafe

On Wednesday 21st March 2007, the UK’s longest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer for almost two centuries delivered his 11th Budget Statement to a packed House of Commons and an anxious nation.

We are, of course, talking about Gordon Brown, heir apparent to Tony Blair’s throne and Budget 2007 was, perhaps, his last big chance to demonstrate his election-winning potential to his colleagues before the long-anticipated Labour leadership contest.

All of this was already well known before the Chancellor began his Budget speech in its new lunchtime slot at 12.30pm. What few people knew before that moment, however, was just what a radical shake-up he had in store for us. I, for one, had anticipated little else but political spin in the speech and reams of technical gobbledegook in the press releases which followed. (I’m the poor sap who has to read, digest and explain those press releases, after all!)
Well, I wasn’t entirely wrong; the speech certainly did contain its fair share of political spin.

The Chancellor began with a few jokes about his long service in the post (he is the longest-serving Chancellor since 1827) and some interesting comments about his ‘comrades’ at the Treasury.

Josef Stalin?

But references to his earlier comparison with Josef Stalin soon faded away as he began to announce some fairly major tax reforms and even one or two headline tax cuts (more of that later). When he also announced that he was proposing to sell off £36 Billion in State-owned assets over the next three years, I began to wonder if the last twenty years had been just a dream and it was actually still 1987 after all.

Amazing, isn’t it, just when you think the Government has sold off everything they can, they still keep scraping up a few more things from the bottom of what must surely be an endless barrel. The student loan book, worth £6 Billion, is apparently now up for sale. It makes me wonder how long it will be before our sons and daughters find that they are now in debt to some rather unsavoury characters in New Jersey, Nevada or Sicily!

Amongst the political spin and flowing rhetoric, however, it must be admitted that this year’s Budget had more real substance than we have seen for several years. Taxation’s place at the heart of the Budget speech seemed to be restored after an enforced absence of several years. “If that’s the size of the tip�, I thought, “I’d better brace myself for the iceberg!� I wasn’t disappointed – as soon as the Chancellor had sat down, the Treasury immediately released a staggering 81 press releases together with more than 40 pages of Budget notes, more than 230 pages of technical material in all.

So it seems that for this, surely his last Budget, Gordon Brown has rediscovered the power of the tax system to win over the electorate (or so he must hope) and, as he closed his speech with the shock announcement of a two pence in the pound reduction in Income Tax, to its lowest rate in 75 years, I had to admit (grudgingly), that he is certainly going out in style!

But who is going to pay for it?

See the Full Analysis & Report supplied by Taxcafe

Get the pdf Version of this Report