Money matters

As all contractors are aware, claiming expenses is a great way of reducing your annual tax bill, and when it comes to familiar items like business mileage, office supplies and client lunches the rules are pretty black and white: there’s no limit to the amount of genuine business expenses you can claim every month providing you’re familiar with HMRC’s guidelines. 

We all know that claiming for your business mileage is a simple and effective way to reduce your tax bill. HMRC's mileage rate is fixed at 40p per mile (for the first 10,000 miles) so, to maximize your savings, it's definitely in your interests to find the most efficient car with the lowest possible running costs. However, it's a big job to work out the true efficiency of your prospective vehicle, especially if you want to consider all bases – including depreciation, road tax, insurance, servicing, fuel efficiency and all other running costs.

Fortunately, not only are Dean and I true petrol heads, we're also pretty handy with excel, so we've selected ten cars, loaded their vital statistics into our spreadsheet and created the ultimate efficiency barometer, calculating the true running costs per mile for each of our chosen cars.

Here’s the result: inniAccounts’ top ten cars for contractor and freelancers:

Here’s the concluding part of our ten point guide on surviving the credit crunch. If you missed part one, click here to catch up .

Network like crazy

Strive to build a network with everything you do. Over the years you’ll meet so many people and each one is a prospective future client or has a link to one. Keep a list and if you’ve not spoken for a while give them a call to catch up - you never know where the conversation may go.

With global economies spiraling out of control, stock market volatility, banks going bust and talk of imminent recession, businesses and individuals are justifiably a little worried.

Whether you’re a contractor, freelancer or consultant you are perhaps a little more worried than most as you are more likely to get a tap on the shoulder before any permanent employees see redundancy. However you are no different to anyone else as bills still have to be paid, so what can you do now to stand the best chance of surviving the challenging times ahead?

Do you know how much your state pension could be when you retire? The Pensions Service will provide a forecast of this information either by letter or an online email service.

As detailed on their website a State Pension forecast gives you in today's money values:

• an estimate of basic and additional State Pension you may get based on your National Insurance Contributions so far and
• an estimate of basic and additional State Pension you may get when you claim your State Pension.

Are you planning a party for your staff? Then make sure you are clear on the tax implications.

The good news is that, unlike entertaining customers, the cost of employee entertaining is generally allowable against the profits of the business.

What about the employees themselves? Is it a perk of their jobs and will they be subject to tax?

A CBI forecast has predicted a ‘shallow recession’ during the final part of 2008 and that growth in the economy in 2009 will be the lowest since 1992.

The CBI’s latest economic forecast has revised its growth predictions for 2008 and 2009 due to the sharper than expected slowdown over the first half of this year. Their forecast takes into account the impact of weak consumer demand, high energy and commodity prices and the effects of the credit crunch.