Beef up your business broadbrand

● Small business owners and self-employed workers who operate from home often rely on their home broadband service for their business needs. That’s fine until something goes wrong; few home broadband deals come with service guarantees. By contrast, business broadband contracts increasingly come with an “alwayson” pledge, where the provider gives you a 4G mobile broadband hub that will kick in if your normal broadband goes down. These contracts are also more likely to feature a guaranteed response time within which your problem will be fixed, with compensation for any failures. If your business could not operate without a broadband connection, paying extra for these safeguards is worth considering.

● Worried about your firm’s energy costs as gas and electricity bills rise this winter? There are several steps you may be able to take to cut the cost of energy, from applying for grants or tax reliefs to installing energy-efficient equipment to securing revenue for generating green power. The website of energy regulator Ofgem (ofgem.gov.uk) is a good place to start for advice and links to a range of initiatives and schemes aimed at small businesses.

● More than 450,000 small businesses in the UK are not ready to begin filing their VAT returns digitally, even though they will be required to do so by HM Revenue & Customs early in 2022. From April 2022, the Making Tax Digital system will be extended to VAT-registered small businesses with turnover of less than £85,000 a year (those above this threshold must already comply). But research from accounting software group QuickBooks suggest 41% of the 1.1 million businesses affected by the change do not have plans for compliance in place.