Month: July 2022

The government has announced their intention to radically overhaul the rights of tenants. The changes announced include:

For tenants

• Helping the most vulnerable by outlawing blanket bans on renting to families with children or those in receipt of benefits.
• For the first time, ending the use of arbitrary rent review clauses, restricting tribunals from hiking up rent and enabling tenants to be repaid rent for non-decent homes. This will make sure tenants can take their landlord to court to seek repayment of rent if their homes are of unacceptable standard.
• Making it easier for tenants to have much-loved pets in their homes by giving all tenants the right to request a pet in their house, which the landlord must consider and cannot unreasonably refuse.
• All tenants to be moved onto a single system of periodic tenancies, meaning they can leave inferior quality housing without remaining liable for the rent or move more easily when their circumstances change. A tenancy will only end if a tenant ends it or a landlord has a valid reason, defined in law.
• Doubling notice periods for rent increases and giving tenants stronger powers to challenge them if they are unjustified.
• Giving councils stronger powers to tackle the worst offenders, backed by enforcement pilots, and increasing fines for serious offences.

For landlords

• A new Private Renters’ Ombudsman will be created to enable disputes between private renters and landlords to be settled quickly, at low cost, and without going to court.
• Ensuring responsible landlords can gain possession of their properties efficiently from anti-social tenants and can sell their properties when they need to.
• Introducing a new property portal that will provide a single front door to help landlords to understand, and comply with, their responsibilities as well as giving councils and tenants the information they need to tackle rogue operators.

According to government sources these reforms will help to ease the cost-of-living pressures renters are facing, saving families from unnecessarily moving from one privately rented home to another and thereby saving hundreds of pounds in moving costs.

In a business context, goodwill could be defined as the amount that a buyer would be prepared to pay for your business over and above the valuation of the business net assets.

Very often, it is the relationships that you have built with your customer base that is the most valuable asset. Buyers will be keen to acquire these relationships and will place greater reliance on this “asset” than any equipment or other on-balance sheet item you may be selling.

How is goodwill valued

There is no fixed formula for valuing goodwill. Its value is finalised by negotiation between buyers and sellers.

There are formulaic methods for including goodwill based on the ability of the buyer to recover their investment, from the business purchased, over a fixed term, say three to five years. Unsurprisingly, buyers of higher risk businesses will want a faster pay-back.

Annual valuations

Although your valuation of your business may be higher or lower than the amount a buyer is prepared to pay there is value on using a consistent process to produce an annual valuation. In this way you can monitor the growth of your business and work at developing those characteristics that will secure a higher price when you come to sell, for example, building an independent management team.

If your taxable income exceeds £100,000 you will suffer a reduction in your personal tax allowance.

For every £2 that your income exceeds £100,000, £1 will be knocked off your allowance. The reduction is progressive and means that once your income exceeds £125,140 your personal allowance of £12,570 will be reduced to zero.

As Income Taxpayers with income in the range, £100,000 to £125,140, are paying tax at 40%, the gradual loss of the personal tax allowance means that the effective rate of tax in this range is 60% not 40%.

Accordingly, if you are affected by this process, tax planning to reduce your income below the £100,000 threshold would be cost effective.

This may involve consideration of pension top-ups, deferring income, sacrificing salary for additional holidays, or other planning options that may be available to you.

Please call so we can help you consider your options.