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For many people in organisations the opening months of the year will coincide with objective setting – an opportunity to plan our development goals over the next 12-months and explore what support is available to us at work to help achieve them. As employees set out to complete this process, organisations will also consider their direction within what is still very much an uncertain operating environment.

As we approach the end of the 2022/23 tax year, employers and payroll software providers will be hoping for fewer changes from Government and some stability for 2023/24.

One of the key challenges facing many Irish and UK companies is capturing sufficient D&I insights to inform real change in their organisation. Most of them have good intentions to make changes in D&I, but they face challenges due to a lack of rich data, actionable insights, and the necessary metrics to determine and prove progress.

Northern Ireland’s commercial property market continued at pace in 2022, with £330 million of investment across 36 transactions, according to CBRE NI. Therefore, the importance of getting the VAT treatment on the sale of commercial property correct cannot be overstated.

As we enter a New Year and the memories of our celebrations begin to fade, we will inevitably look to the 12 months ahead to understand how 2023 shapes in terms of work, holidays and finances. To that end Economists are like everyone else, except we will look ahead to what potential challenges and opportunities await the economy. While we will admit this is probably a dull exercise to many, we find this is quite a useful task, which will allow us to confidently advise our clients on how to ‘navigate’ the year ahead.

TEA is a measure of all entrepreneurial activity that is taking place in an economy at any given time. It is calculated by taking the sum of all entrepreneurship-related activities, such as starting a new business, expanding an existing business, and innovating within an existing business. TEA is an important metric for understanding the overall health of an economy, as it provides insight into the level of risk-taking and innovation taking place. High levels of TEA are generally seen as a sign of economic health and prosperity.

The last number of years have presented unique sets of challenges for businesses, whether that be navigating the aftermath of Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing energy costs, or spiralling inflation and the associated cost of living crisis. This has led to business leaders making decisions that would have been unheard of a decade ago, and brought with it an ever-increasing level of uncertainty.

It is at this time of the year, that we usually reflect on the year just past, about how we might want to be a better leader or manager at work going forward. For many of us, it does not get beyond the thought process or indeed the first few weeks of January, before we fall back into our old ways of working.

The New Year brings a new penalty regime for VAT, replacing the existing VAT default surcharge regime starting with VAT periods starting on or after 1 January 2023. The new regime aims to create fairer results for taxpayers and this should be well-received by taxpayers, as there was a risk the VAT default surcharge regime could result in significant penalties being issued by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) for minor errors in comparison with other taxes.

What is a bot? If you look up the definition in the Oxford dictionary, you would learn that it is “a computer program that runs automated tasks over the internet”. That doesn’t sound so bad on its own, and it isn’t – a program is a tool, a little different in that regard to, say, a hammer. In the right hands, hammers can be used to build all kinds of things, from the mundane to the spectacular, and on the other hand, they can be used to break those things into pieces.

I scanned a carton of milk at the supermarket last week and was convinced the machine was faulty. Had I accidentally lifted a more expensive brand? I was so shocked that, against my usual nature, I even queried it with the shop assistant. To my slight embarrassment, the explanation was simple: that’s the price of milk now. Clearly, our net pay is not stretching as far as it once did. Is there anything employers can do to help?

In the past months, we have witnessed the slow return of travel as restrictions lifted. The startling images of airport queues during summer signalled a return to normality, but this was primarily driven by leisure travellers. The return of business travel has been at a much slower pace. Advancements in technology have reduced the need for business travel. With these advancements, organisations have been able to work with new clients or bid on projects they may not have previously considered due to location.

Has your business made a loss in the last couple of years? If so – you may have a decision to make. NI businesses have been particularly tested over the last number of years, not only from the Covid-19 pandemic and the implementation of the NI Protocol but furthermore by the current “cost of living crisis”. These challenges have impacted the bottom line for NI businesses, pushing many companies into loss-making positions for the first time.

There remains a significant level of uncertainty for many Northern Ireland businesses, with high levels of inflation, rising interest rates increasing the cost of borrowing, and political uncertainty. These factors provide a timely reminder of the importance of managing cash flow.

The speed of change and its magnitude is continuously evolving, which means that individuals and organisations need to be adaptable to survive – just look back at the pandemic! For change to work and be sustained, it needs to be driven from the inside out, reflecting an organisations’ leadership, culture, values, beliefs and practices.

Fraud is costing business and individuals in the UK millions of pounds annually – with fraudsters stealing a total of £609.8m in the first six months of this year alone. The figures contained in a UK Finance report, are worth considering, in this International Fraud Awareness Week 2022, as we take stock and consider what type of frauds have been occurring and what you can do to help prevent yourself becoming a victim.