Daily Archives: March 12, 2021

Microsoft are offering a free trial of Microsoft 365 Audio Conferencing for one year.

Microsoft 365 Audio Conferencing adds a dial-in conference option to your organisation for Teams meetings. This enables participants without the Microsoft Teams app to join a meeting via a phone number. Having a dial-in option is very useful for participants on the move or who are without a computer to use. Once set up, conference numbers appear automatically in the meeting invites to share.

Organisations that would benefit from a full phone system should consider Microsoft 365 Business Voice. This allows companies to stay connected with a centralised main phone number with specific numbers/extensions for each user.

As a Microsoft Partner we can offer special discounts on both products, please contact us for more information.

The government is currently considering an ecommerce tax that could increase taxes for leading UK retailers’ online sales.

Business rates have been called into discussion as they are said to be outdated and unfair. The Treasury is reviewing the future of business rates, which will be reported in the autumn.

One option being considered is a tax on sales made online, of about 2%. These proceeds could then be used to reduce business rates, which are calculated by applying a tax rate to the annual rental value of a property. The current level of this tax is 51%, which could be reduced to around 35%. However, despite the proposed reduction in business rates, with an ecommerce tax, some retailers may result in paying more than they previously did.

High street retailers such as John Lewis, Next and Dixons Carphone likely would not benefit from this change. Online sales have played a huge part in keeping some retailers afloat during national lockdowns during the pandemic, for example John Lewis’s revenue is currently made up of 60% of online sales compared to 40% before the coronavirus.

If implemented, the savings on business rates would likely be cancelled out if not more for some retailers. Amazon, as an online-only retailer, would see a huge increase in it’s tax, likely to be around £380m. But benefit would instead be seen by high street only retailers such as Primark, Aldi and B&M.

Arguably the Chancellor does need to recover the debt created by necessary spending during the pandemic, and with some larger businesses – who had the resources to be able to benefit from the situation – having moved much of their sales online, this could be a solution to tax those whilst allowing the high street to recover.