More firms register with taxman
Tens of thousands more businesses registered for VAT or PAYE at the end of the last tax year, according to data released yesterday. Thirty-six thousand more firms registered for one of the two main taxes in March 2012, compared to the year before, the Office for National Statistics said. But 31,000 of this increase came from improvements to computer systems used by Her Majesty’s Revenue, the statistics body claimed. The data also revealed that London contains some 16.7 per cent of the UK’s businesses, of which there are now 2.15m in total.