Do I Need to Complete IHT400 Before Applying for Probate?
Nobody warns you about the paperwork. You hear about the grief, the funeral arrangements, and the difficult family conversations. But the administrative maze that follows death? That blindsides most people completely. One of the most common questions professionals encounter when handling estates is: do I need to complete IHT400 before applying for probate? The answer […]
How to Choose the Right Tax Specialist Near Me 2026
Most people only start thinking seriously about finding a tax specialist near me when something goes wrong. An unexpected HMRC letter. A looming self-assessment deadline. A business growing faster than anyone anticipated. By then, the pressure is already on — which is precisely the worst time to be making important decisions about who handles your […]
Business Growth Planning Strategies That Work
There’s a version of business growth planning that looks great in a presentation slide and does absolutely nothing in the real world. You’ve seen it — the five-year plan with optimistic revenue curves and aspirational market share figures, printed nicely, filed somewhere, and never looked at again until someone finds it during an office clear-out […]
How to Compare Bookkeeping Services Near Me
Published by Ask Accountant | 178 Merton High St, London SW19 1AY Here’s the thing nobody tells you when you first go looking for bookkeeping services near me: the search results are almost aggressively unhelpful. You get a wall of names, phone numbers, and near-identical promises about “accurate records” and “competitive pricing.” It’s a bit […]
Construction Accounting for Contractors Explained 2026
Nobody warns you about the paperwork. You spent years perfecting your trade — mastering the pour, the fix, the fit-out. Then somebody handed you a contract worth £180,000, spread across eight months, on a site where three other firms are working. Now HMRC wants to know exactly how much of that counts as income this […]
Inheritance Tax Limit Explained 2026
There’s a particular kind of financial shock that tends to arrive at the worst possible moment. You’ve just lost someone. The paperwork is mounting. And then, tucked inside a letter from HMRC, comes a tax bill that nobody anticipated — sometimes for tens of thousands of pounds. All because a threshold quietly existed, and nobody […]
IHT Tax Planning: How to Reduce the Bill
Here’s something that keeps tax advisors up at night: watching ordinary families hand over 40% of everything they’ve built to HMRC. Not because they haven’t worked hard. Not because they haven’t saved. But because they didn’t know the rules of a game nobody really explains properly. I’m talking about Inheritance Tax – or IHT, as […]
Inheritance Tax: How Much Will You Really Pay?
Here’s something nobody tells you at dinner parties: inheritance tax isn’t just for the wealthy anymore. I’ve watched too many families discover this the hard way—right when they’re grieving, already overwhelmed, and suddenly facing a tax bill that could’ve been avoided (or at least reduced) with a bit of planning. The problem? Most people think […]
CIS Accountants: Common HMRC Compliance Mistakes
Right. Let’s get this out of the way: if you’re a contractor in construction and you think CIS compliance is just about ticking boxes once a month, you’re in for a rude awakening. And probably a penalty notice. Most contractors don’t realise they need specialist CIS accountants until something goes catastrophically wrong. I’ve watched perfectly competent builders—people […]
