Carter Collins & Myer

Carter Collins & Myer Local, practical and on your side accounting services from experienced professionals | cloud accounting specialists | tax saving ninjas

Here at CCM | Carter, Collins & Myer, we work closely with a broad range of business and personal clients. We offer:

Accounts, Bookkeeping and VAT
Tax and Payroll
CGT Returns for Property Sales
Research and Development Tax Relief
Estate Planning
Licensed Trade Accountants
Raising Money or Buying and Selling a Business
Compliance
Business Coaching
Accountants for Start Ups

Our 30+ team provides a

dvice and looks after the interests of a wide range of private individuals and business clients from professional practices, the sport, media and entertainment industries, as well as family-owned and managed enterprises. The aim is to help all our clients to make more profit and lower their risk. If you’re a business owner, you’ll find our profit improvement health-check is a great starting point to unlocking the profit potential in your business. We can offer advice about the steps that you need to take to get you from where you are now to where you would like to be.

I’ve met plenty of directors who know exactly how much they owe the bank.Ask them about personal guarantees and the answ...
02/09/2026

I’ve met plenty of directors who know exactly how much they owe the bank.

Ask them about personal guarantees and the answer can be rather less certain. There was one for the overdraft, probably. Maybe another when the finance was renewed. Something was signed for the asset finance. It was years ago. The bank said it was standard.

Personal guarantees have an odd habit of being forgotten while everything is going well.

Then the business gets into trouble and a company debt you thought belonged to the company suddenly has your name on it.

That’s a particularly bad time to discover what you signed.

A client family we are advising has done very well. Around £2m sits in a SIPP, much of it in the commercial building the...
01/09/2026

A client family we are advising has done very well. Around £2m sits in a SIPP, much of it in the commercial building their company trades from. Sensible planning that has worked exactly as intended.

For deaths on or after 6 April 2027, most unused pension funds will be brought into the IHT calculation. That can create a liquidity problem when much of the value is tied up in bricks and mortar. You cannot sell a building one brick at a time - and selling it may undermine the successful business trading from it.

Nobody got this wrong. The pension worked, the business prospered and the property increased in value. But good planning can create the next planning question. That is why we are looking at it now, while the family still has options.

If your pension holds commercial property, it may be worth doing the same.

01/09/2026

Handing a customer the card terminal feels harmless. It is also handing them a machine capable of sending money out.

One form of fraud involves gaining control of the terminal and using its refund function. The person appears to be paying the business while money is actually heading the other way.

Check whether refunds require a staff PIN, who knows it and whether somebody matches refunds against the day’s sales.

Most controls only look unnecessary until the morning they aren’t.

HMRC owes you money.A few years ago, if you did nothing, eventually a cheque would generally turn up. Now, for most PAYE...
31/08/2026

HMRC owes you money.

A few years ago, if you did nothing, eventually a cheque would generally turn up. Now, for most PAYE refunds, you actually have to claim it.

That sounds like a small change until you discover that last year more than 730,000 tax refunds went unclaimed, averaging £855 each. So if HMRC owes you money, apparently you need to remember to ask for it. If you owe HMRC money, I wouldn’t recommend waiting for them to forget.

Worth checking the HMRC app occasionally. You might find £855 you didn’t know you had.

31/08/2026

Earning a little more can leave rather less than expected once your income passes £100,000.

At that point, the Personal Allowance starts to disappear. Combined with higher-rate tax, this can create an effective 60% tax rate on part of your income.

The figure to check is not merely salary. Dividends, rental income and other taxable income can all affect the position.

The tax return is a poor place to discover a decision that needed making during the tax year.

30/08/2026

Three very different problems often begin with the same sentence: “I assumed somebody else had checked it.”

1️. The hidden 60%
Once adjusted net income passes £100,000, the Personal Allowance begins to disappear. Salary alone does not tell you where you stand: dividends, rent and other taxable income count too. This is worth checking while there is still time to consider pension contributions, Gift Aid or the timing of income.

2️. The property VAT rule changed
Since 29 July, computers have been removed from the Capital Goods Scheme and the threshold for land, buildings and civil engineering works has risen from £250,000 to £600,000 excluding VAT. Recent property spending deserves a fresh look.

3️. The refund button
Someone with control of your card terminal may be able to process a refund rather than make a payment. Check the staff PIN, who knows it and whether refunds are reconciled against daily sales.

All three are five-minute checks beforehand and rather longer conversations afterwards.

The fuller version - including what to check - goes out by email on Thursdays. Link in the comments.

I got to train karate this week. Not teach it. Actually train.I love teaching, but sometimes I get fed up with being the...
28/08/2026

I got to train karate this week. Not teach it. Actually train.

I love teaching, but sometimes I get fed up with being the person at the front. There’s something lovely about getting back in the line, shutting up, listening, and having someone else tell me what I’m doing wrong.

I think I’ll always prefer being a student. At karate. At accounting. At life.

I’m grateful there’s still so much I don’t know.

I’ve seen directors borrow money without ever signing a loan agreement.Payroll gets run. The PAYE and National Insurance...
27/08/2026

I’ve seen directors borrow money without ever signing a loan agreement.

Payroll gets run. The PAYE and National Insurance are calculated. There’s enough cash in the bank to pay HMRC next week - but there’s a supplier who needs paying today.

So the money gets used.

Nobody thinks of it as borrowing. It’s just moving things around for a few days. Next month will be better. That big customer is paying. The money will go back.

Sometimes it does.

The dangerous moment is when money you know isn’t yours starts feeling like part of the company’s working capital.

I was contacted last week by someone looking to set up a CIC. When I asked who it was there to help, the answer was basi...
26/08/2026

I was contacted last week by someone looking to set up a CIC. When I asked who it was there to help, the answer was basically everyone. There was a good reason for it - they genuinely didn’t want to exclude anyone.

But “everyone” makes it surprisingly difficult to explain what the organisation actually exists to do. We talked it through and gradually got to something much more specific.

It can feel uncomfortable drawing a line around who you’re there to serve. But being clear about who you’re helping is often what allows you to actually help them.

A fair amount of my working life is spent correcting HMRC mistakes. Wrong tax codes. Duplicate taxpayer records. Demands...
25/08/2026

A fair amount of my working life is spent correcting HMRC mistakes. Wrong tax codes. Duplicate taxpayer records. Demands for tax that was never owed.

So I raised an eyebrow at this. HMRC wants a new criminal offence for taxpayers who make “reckless” untrue statements, with up to two years in prison or an unlimited fine. Genuine mistakes, apparently, will not count.

People who deliberately evade tax should be prosecuted. Absolutely. But when I’ve spent nearly 30 years watching HMRC make perfectly genuine mistakes of its own, I’m slightly uncomfortable with HMRC deciding when somebody else’s mistake becomes “reckless”.

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Chichester House, 2 Chichester Street
Rochdale
OL162AX

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Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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