Group Commercial Director Daren Moore has written to Rishi Sunak requesting he reconsider key elements of the government’s support and intervention packages. 

Following the flurry of recent announcements from the Government on new initiatives to support small businesses and the self-employed, the TaxAssist Accountants Support Centre team has been working flat out to offer help and guidance to its network of accountants and their 76,000 clients.

While many clients will welcome the measures announced so far, large sections of the business community have been overlooked, without the help and funding they need.

In order to address this, Daren Moore has written a letter to the Chancellor to request that he reconsider a number of key issues missing from the recent announcements.

“Whilst we support many of the measures announced to date, we are concerned that large sections of the business community are suffering and that these measures will not provide the help and funding they need,” explained Daren. “We are already seeing our clients under stress and we risk seeing many thousands of small businesses fail without prompt action.”

Daren outlined four key issues that TaxAssist’s clients and its franchisees would like to see urgently addressed including:

• Sole/small company directors and their ineligibility to be furloughed under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
• The proposal to look at three years for averaging purposes, leaving those who commenced trading since 5th April 2019 financially stranded
• The unfairness of the £50,000 trading profit threshold
• The need for emergency funding to speed up the flow of money

Daren added: “As a proud and ethical franchisor we will take every available opportunity to use our voice to highlight the needs and concerns of our core clients – small businesses – the ‘lifeblood’ of the UK economy. In these difficult times, we need to support and protect them in any way we can, now, to ensure that the sector remains intact and fully functioning when the recovery does come.”