UK Business Advisors (UKBA) believes that Time to Pay has been a major help to small businesses, and is concerned that its withdrawal will threaten the survival of many small businesses, just at the time that the economy is looking to them to help pull the country out of the slump. Time to Pay is a government initiative by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) that enables businesses to spread tax payments over several stages.  It has been particularly helpful to small business with smoothing out quarterly VAT payments.  Three small payments are much easier to manage than one large one. However the latest HMRC stats show that the Revenue are only granting Time to Pay at a third of the level in 2009.  This is because they have made it clear that they will not allow repeat applications.  HMRC have now announced that they will no longer publish statistics on this important safety net, further threatening the survival of this scheme. The recent poor performance figures from HMRC appear to … [Read more...]