Corporate Financier

Companies meeting the audit threshold for the first time often do not know what is expected of them. As well as the burden of adjusting to unfamiliar requirements and new ways of working, in the first year, management needs to be prepared to spend additional time and effort on reporting. “Unaudited opening balances will need to be audited the first year a company meets the audit threshold,” explains Julie Breakell, Partner at Forvis Mazars.

The pressures the already notoriously volatile hospitality sector is currently facing are unprecedented. From rising inflation to National Minimum Wage increases, business rate rises and staffing challenges, the list goes on. “Hospitality also requires labour-heavy outsourced services such as cleaning, security and waste management services, so the impact of all these cost pressures flow all the way through the profit and loss statement,” says Alison Wong ACA, CFO of House of Gods Hotel Group.

Our chart of the week is on gross domestic product (GDP), the principal measure used by statisticians and economists to assess the size of the economy. The chart shows how nominal GDP (GDP at market prices in current values) was £1.9tn in 2015, rising to £2.0tn in 2016, £2.1tn in 2017, £2.2tn in 2018 and then £2.3tn in 2019. Nominal GDP fell to £2.1tn in 2020 (the first year of the pandemic) and then rose to £2.3tn in 2021, £2.6tn in 2022, £2.8tn in 2023, £2.9tn in 2024 and then £3.0tn in 2025.

Pensioners who received the 2025 winter fuel payment will have to pay the full amount back to the government where their total income for the year to 5 April 2026 exceeds £35,000. This limit is based on the individual’s income, not household income. HMRC estimates that approximately 2 million people will need to repay their 2025 winter fuel payment. The payments will begin to be recovered through the tax system from April 2026. In most cases, this will be done automatically by HMRC.

The current climate is increasing demand for advisory services Jonathan Day, Partner at Streets, says he is seeing clients increasingly asking for advice that goes well beyond compliance and year-end reporting.

It is estimated that fraud costs the UK economy around £14.4bn a year and accounts for around 45% of all crime across England and Wales, according to the Crime Survey of England and Wales 2025. Of the adults surveyed one in 14 were found to be victims of fraud.

PAYE is tax withheld at source from employment and pension income. Typically, taxpayers who are due a repayment will receive a P800 tax calculation letter following the end of the tax year advising them of the refund due. Since 31 May 2024, HMRC no longer issues PAYE refunds automatically and taxpayers must claim any repayment due to them: on the HMRC app; via the online bank transfer service; through their personal tax account; or by requesting a cheque.

The ICAEW Chartered Accountant qualification, the ACA, is one of the most advanced learning and professional development programmes available. It is valued around the world in business, practice and the public sector. How to become an ICAEW Chartered Accountant Discover how your organisation can attract and train the best accountancy talent, how to become authorised to offer ACA training and the support on offer if you are already providing training. Find out more

I’m back from a lovely few days in Cornwall. The first thing I do is turn on Microsoft Copilot and ask it to summarise my emails. I’m specific in my prompt as I require a list of actions triaged urgent, non-urgent and nice-to-have so it gives me a really good idea of what's in my emails. Copilot took a while to get to know me, it now knows my writing style, my role in the business, what I'm interested in and who I interact with.

AI tools are becoming a prerequisite for accountants, just as Excel fluency was for the previous generation, as the opportunities to automate routine activities, analyse vast datasets, and support a radical reinvention of the finance business partnering concept strike a chord. But a mismatch between perceived opportunity and operational readiness is cause for concern.