For years now the European Union severely limited the ability of national governments to reduce VAT rates – which fact seemed to have escaped Tony Blair who promised cuts during the 1997 General Election though he “found out” later. Good excuse not to keep your manifesto promises eh?
However following a meeting earlier this month the [...]

Google recently reached an agreement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) under which the firm will pay $125 million to resolve outstanding legal actions against it in relation to its Google Book search service, which offers full-text searching facilities to users.
The agreement, reached after two years of negotiations, is subject to [...]

In the present financial crisis there will be very few businesses who will not be finding things difficult. The most important area that business owners and managers should be concentrating on is cash flow and the following are a few elements to look at where managing cash flow is concerned:
Credit Control – no sales transaction [...]

Ask most people how they would structure a new business and the chances are that they will talk about starting a company. That’s fine and works a lot of the time but usually only in conjunction with a shareholder agreement.
One of the oldest forms of business structure is the Partnership – and this is often [...]

Many small start-ups find setting up an office at home the most attractive option. It is cheap and handy, but there may be drawbacks.
The Legal Position
The first thing is to consider is whether or not you can legally set your office up at home. If you rent your home there may very well be a [...]

Yes, its 100 not out! So probably time to pat ourselves on the back and remind the world – and ourselves – what this blog is all about!
In short the intention is to develop this site into a resource centre for small and medium sized businesses. In doing so we will present a wide range [...]

Must all companies have a secretary?
Yes and No. From 6th April 2008 private companies will not need to have a company secretary but public limited companies still will. Furthermore companies registered before 6th April 2008 will have to change their Articles of Association at an Extraordinary General Meeting of the shareholders to remove the requirement [...]