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There are major changes to pension rules for employers on the way. Depending on the size of your business, you could be affected as early as October 2012. However, for businesses with fewer than 250 employees they won't come into effect until February 2014. The rules are numerous and are too complex to list here. Therefore it is imperative that proper advice is sought and that it is tailored to your business.

For Greenstones customers (namely the small owner managed business) there are not really any new surprises following today’s budget.

Most business owners pay an accountant each year to construct a balance sheet of assets less liabilities at a certain date. This can be a very useful tool to analyse the business net worth, cash flow requirements and liquidity. Clever business owners also construct a summary personal balance sheet to measure their personal net worth.

The UK has reached an agreement with Switzerland as part of its crackdown on tax evasion. A powerful new provision will allow HMRC to discover whether an individual UK taxpayer has an account in Switzerland. The aim of this agreement is to prevent the abuse of Swiss banking secrecy by those who seek to conceal the proceeds of tax evasion.

The rules regarding the tax relief on pension payments changed in April of this year. Now, tax relief is only available for contributions up to £50,000 per annum. This limit however only applies to individuals and for shareholder/directors there can, in the right circumstances, be quite a tax advantage in using the company to pay the premium on your behalf.

Since 1 November Junior ISA’s have been available. Each eligible child ISA account has an annual savings limit of £3600. The new accounts offer parents a simple and tax free way to save for their child’s future.

As part of its commitment to tackle tax evasion HM Revenue & Customs have announced that they are setting up specialised teams of tax investigators to target individuals with property abroad. In particular they are searching for those individuals who either are not declaring the correct income and / or gains from the properties or those who do not appear to be able to legitimately afford the property.