If the renewal cost is the same as the initial license then I have to go with Shirley above.
If the renewal is only a fraction of the initial license fee then it may be worth depreciating the initial fee over some years (3, 5, whatever is appropriate and conforms to the existing Capital Assets accounting policy for this client - if they haven't got one then de-facto you are going to create one).
Materiality. To an extent this depends on the size of the business, however, even for the smallest of businesses, with an initial fee of say a few hundred quid and then renewal fees of say, £50 then it may not be worth the effort of recording this as an asset and then depreciating it. Of course it may be that writing the whole lot off in one year will be a waste of potentially deductible expenses if the client is not profitable.
If the amounts are larger then capitalisation may be appropriate, however, even for middling organisations (say a primary school) assets of say, £10k or less will not be capitalised (though they will be, or at least should be, kept on a register) - but then they (state schools) are not concerned with tax but with keeping track of their assets.
There, and I didn't mention Land Value Tax, Henry George or Steve Keen once.
given the army of clerks that will be needed to check compliance (as alluded to in several posts above). The charade of the NCE's tax system goes on. This thread is about the grubby end.....
Henry George - Progress and Poverty. Mason Gaffney - Corruption of Economics
Steve Keen - Debunking Economics and Positivemoney.org (Ben Dyson even got 15 mins of R4 last week......)
We're not so different from the Greeks. I'm thinking of the recent publication of the list of 2,000 or so Greeks with Swiss Bank accounts by a journalist. The list has been in the possession of the Greek authorities for at least 2 years, they did nothing, the journalist has been promptly arrested. Of course our system is more subtle and will not be forced into the open so easily as this but essentially it does the same thing. Only the little people pay tax.
that my comment would attach to the one that I'm responding to, but it didn't. It was/is a response to Tom 7000 who suggested, probably playfully, that fines for clients and accountants (which I suspect already exist anyway) would solve the problem.
But why would tax accountants want it solved, after all, the uncertainty and the argy bargy is the grist to their mill.
the Baltic States and Hong Kong have landvaluetax too
Although no country has a system that collects all of the LVT it could the Baltic States and Kong Kong use LVT as a significant element of their tax systems. Arguably it is this that enables them to have a flat tax regime on income taxes and high personal allowances such that many, or perhaps most, working people pay no income tax at all. The Baltic States had the advantage of a clean slate and no landowner interest (although, regrettably, they probably have one now as they only have a partial LVT). Hong Kong had the advantage of a technocratic elite consciously setting up a business friendly jurisdiction at a great distance from the UK's landed interests at a time when Henry George and LVT were topical and popular among those interested in political economy. Neo-Classical Economics has done a great job of burying George over the last 100 years as it's landowner patrons required it to (see Mason Gaffney).
Personally I want to agree with Georgist "single taxers" (the original ones not the IoD and Taxpayers Alliance inspired nonsense we heard about the other day) and impose an as high as possible landvaluetax, say 95% (leaving just enough to make land ownership/management a profitable business) and then see if any other taxes are even necessary (apart from sin and nudge taxes which society may mandate and whose main purpose will not be revenue raising per-se, e.g. tobacco, alcohol, carbon, pollutants in general etc etc...).
Abolish NI, Income Tax, Corporation Tax, Stamp Duty, Rates, NBR, VAT, Inheritance Tax and any others which I can't think of right now.
landvaluetax.org - Henry George - Progress and Poverty. Mason Gaffney - The Corruption of Economics.
My answers
materiality@Carnmores. I think I said that. Didn't I?
And you're right what a lot of heat.....
Henry George - Progress and Poverty. Steve Keen - Debunking Economics.
How much is the renewal?
If the renewal cost is the same as the initial license then I have to go with Shirley above.
If the renewal is only a fraction of the initial license fee then it may be worth depreciating the initial fee over some years (3, 5, whatever is appropriate and conforms to the existing Capital Assets accounting policy for this client - if they haven't got one then de-facto you are going to create one).
Materiality. To an extent this depends on the size of the business, however, even for the smallest of businesses, with an initial fee of say a few hundred quid and then renewal fees of say, £50 then it may not be worth the effort of recording this as an asset and then depreciating it. Of course it may be that writing the whole lot off in one year will be a waste of potentially deductible expenses if the client is not profitable.
If the amounts are larger then capitalisation may be appropriate, however, even for middling organisations (say a primary school) assets of say, £10k or less will not be capitalised (though they will be, or at least should be, kept on a register) - but then they (state schools) are not concerned with tax but with keeping track of their assets.
There, and I didn't mention Land Value Tax, Henry George or Steve Keen once.
You're a genius. You've solved unemployment too
given the army of clerks that will be needed to check compliance (as alluded to in several posts above). The charade of the NCE's tax system goes on. This thread is about the grubby end.....
Henry George - Progress and Poverty. Mason Gaffney - Corruption of Economics
Steve Keen - Debunking Economics and Positivemoney.org (Ben Dyson even got 15 mins of R4 last week......)
We're not so different from the Greeks. I'm thinking of the recent publication of the list of 2,000 or so Greeks with Swiss Bank accounts by a journalist. The list has been in the possession of the Greek authorities for at least 2 years, they did nothing, the journalist has been promptly arrested. Of course our system is more subtle and will not be forced into the open so easily as this but essentially it does the same thing. Only the little people pay tax.
I hit the reply button and assumed
that my comment would attach to the one that I'm responding to, but it didn't. It was/is a response to Tom 7000 who suggested, probably playfully, that fines for clients and accountants (which I suspect already exist anyway) would solve the problem.
But why would tax accountants want it solved, after all, the uncertainty and the argy bargy is the grist to their mill.
Henry George - Progress and Poverty.
the Baltic States and Hong Kong have landvaluetax too
Although no country has a system that collects all of the LVT it could the Baltic States and Kong Kong use LVT as a significant element of their tax systems. Arguably it is this that enables them to have a flat tax regime on income taxes and high personal allowances such that many, or perhaps most, working people pay no income tax at all. The Baltic States had the advantage of a clean slate and no landowner interest (although, regrettably, they probably have one now as they only have a partial LVT). Hong Kong had the advantage of a technocratic elite consciously setting up a business friendly jurisdiction at a great distance from the UK's landed interests at a time when Henry George and LVT were topical and popular among those interested in political economy. Neo-Classical Economics has done a great job of burying George over the last 100 years as it's landowner patrons required it to (see Mason Gaffney).
Personally I want to agree with Georgist "single taxers" (the original ones not the IoD and Taxpayers Alliance inspired nonsense we heard about the other day) and impose an as high as possible landvaluetax, say 95% (leaving just enough to make land ownership/management a profitable business) and then see if any other taxes are even necessary (apart from sin and nudge taxes which society may mandate and whose main purpose will not be revenue raising per-se, e.g. tobacco, alcohol, carbon, pollutants in general etc etc...).
Abolish NI, Income Tax, Corporation Tax, Stamp Duty, Rates, NBR, VAT, Inheritance Tax and any others which I can't think of right now.
landvaluetax.org - Henry George - Progress and Poverty. Mason Gaffney - The Corruption of Economics.
I also like positivemoney.org