Starting a Business For Dummies, 4th Edition

Chapter 14

Managing Your Tax Position

In This Chapter

Finding out how much tax you have to pay

Seeing how to cut that bill, legally

Knowing how to handle employment taxes

Getting through a tax investigation intact

The government raised £591.7 billion in 2012/13 in one form of tax or another, equivalent to roughly £11,500 for every adult in the UK. Not only is the amount colossal but now about a zillion ways exist in which tax is raised. Aside from income tax, which only accounts for £154.8 billion of the money raised, you have value added tax (VAT) and national insurance (NI), which most people brush across. Then you have taxes or reliefs from paying tax on fuel, capital gains, capital expenditure, research and development, business rates, excise duty, a climate change levy, air passenger duty, landfill tax, an aggregates levy, small company tax relief, vehicle excise duties and stamp duties, to mention but a few that the successful owner manager can expect to encounter. Each of these tax categories in turn has a number of its own categories. VAT, for example, is levied at a standard ...