Taxing times for SMEs lead to expansion move for consultant

Tax headaches for the North West’s small business community has prompted one of the region’s leading independent consultancies to move to bigger premises in order to cope with a growing volume of work.

Five years after establishing a head office in Lymm, ETC Tax has announced that it has transferred its head office to Altrincham.

The company also maintains an office at Spinningfields, in the heart of Manchester’s business district.

Managing director Angela Wood said the combination of an ever-more complex tax system and more vigorous pursuit of errors by HMRC had resulted in an increase in demand for its services from SMEs and their owners.

“The North West is home to one of the country’s most thriving and innovative business communities,” she said.

“However, it is facing some very testing times and the burden of dealing with tax can seem disproportionately large for those men and women running small enterprises who may not have specialist tax help in-house.

“Changes such as the introduction of digital taxation by HMRC and the extension of new off-payroll working rules to the private sector have only added to that burden and succeeded in making the pressures involved in getting tax right much greater.”

She added: “We have had five great years in Lymm, but we have had to accept that we have simply outgrown our offices there.

“We feel that moving to Altrincham will not just enable us to serve our existing clients even better, but allow us to work with its own vibrant business community.”

Mrs Wood added that ETC Tax’s new office at Market Court would also give them more space for potential future recruits, having recently appointed Robert Wilson as tax manager, which has taken the company’s headcount to 15.

She explained that the firm advises SMEs and their owners on both corporate and personal tax, as well as dealing with entrepreneurs and high net worth individuals nationwide.

Recent research has underlined the importance of the SME community, in particular, to the British economy.

Statistics compiled for a House of Commons’ briefing paper noted that SMEs accounted for almost two-thirds of all private sector employment (16.3 million people) and just over half of all private sector turnover (£2 trillion).

The same study also revealed that the North West topped the country for the rate at which new businesses were established, beating London into second place.

Nevertheless, Mrs Wood identified how the region’s small firms were feeling the pressure of HMRC’s attempts to maximise its revenues.

The Revenue’s annual report, published at the end of July, detailed how small businesses accounted for 40% of the £35bn ‘tax gap’ – the difference between the tax due and amount collected – during 2017-18.

In the same document, HMRC spelt out how £9.4bn of the missing sums was due either to the “failure to take reasonable care” or “error”.