As spin goes, this article in Property Wire does a good job of suggesting that, as the property prices fall, the increased demand for rental property is 'good news' for landlords.

The problem is : while the demand is there; as the energy prices increase and the credit crunch bites, people are actually less and less able to pay their rent.

In fairness, they do actually acknowledge the reality of the situation right at the tail end of the piece, when AXA Loans MD, Mike Keating says "...if you consider that many of those renting may be struggling to make ends meet it's certainly not all good news for buy-to-let owners..."

The combination of increased demand to rent with decreased ability to pay is going to cause serious problems for the new class of reluctant landlords who are only renting because they are unable to sell.

These are people that need to get really good business and accountancy advice as early as they can in their 'careers' as landlords.

Despite economic forecasts looking fairly bleak and strong arguments for both raising or lowering interest rates, The Bank of England has chosen to ...do nothing.

Reuters is reporting that a meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee chose not to raise or cut interest rates, despite increasing inflation levels and sluggish growth.

Some kind of leadership - one way or another - from The Bank of England at the moment would send out a strong signal of intent. After all, it's this kind of thing that defines them. To do nothing at all, is not as the old quote suggests, the most difficult thing of all. It is cowardice.

Fascinating post over at Newsnight journalist Paul Mason's BBC blog regarding the possibility that a major high street bank will go under in "the next year".

While Paul is only quoting a conversation between a couple of people involved in hedge funds, this is pretty much the kind of scaremongering we don't really need at this point.

The thing is that: despite serious problems faced by HBOS and a number of other big players, we know that the British government will never allow a major bank to fail.

Northern Rock has already proven that. (It's interesting that the British government is effectively sponsoring Newcastle Utd football club...that will please that famous Magpies fan Tony Blair, I'm sure).

So, Mr Mason's post is of 'the sky is falling' form of journalism.

However, if we really truly were a 'free market' economy, he would, of course, be pretty much spot on.

But, the ultimate irony of 'free market' economics is that - ever since Thatcher, The Adam Smith Institute and Reaganomics - it only applies to companies outside of the establishment.

It shocks and depresses me that mis-managed institutions like the banks are allowed to continue where any other company would be out of business.

Last year, one of the main complaints among new businesses contacting Just Accountants was that their VAT registration applications seemed to have been stuck in the ether for weeks, even months at a time.

The rumour, largely perpetuated by HMRC chief David Harnett, was that one firm of accountants had single handedly caused a massive bottleneck in the process by submitting 20,000 VAT applications in only one month.

However, it appears that this wasn't the reason for the delays at all.

In fact, the real reason was that "The VAT registration computer systems could not provide reliable information on the level of work unhand as the data was not robust. Also, staff shortages meant that some applications were not entered promptly on to the registration computer systems."

While the firm of accountants alleged to have submitted so many applications in a single month was never named, I don't see them receiving an apology from Mr Harnett.

Is this because there was no such firm? Who knows.

It appears that the suggestion by Lord Howe (yes, he is still alive!) to investigate government business tax proposals has met with a favourable response.

A number of well-known companies, including Shire and United Business Media, have recently moved out of UK tax jurisdiction because they view the UK tax system as both unfair and unreasonably complex.

Members of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants were polled and felt that the United Kingdom was at the bottom of the pile when it came to transparency and fairness.

You know when your tax system is too complicated and bogged down in bureaucracy when even the accountants themselves - who, after all, are paid to understand this stuff - feel things needs to be clarified.

If they feel that way, what hope the rest of us?

Why is it that the biggest companies in every industry think that, by virtue of their size, they somehow occupy the moral high ground.

Witness KPMG, who have just issued a code of conduct for their suppliers, which 'requests' that suppliers adhere to certain environment policies in order to retain their relationship with the accountancy giants.

While it is admirable that KPMG are concerned about renewable energy, carbon footprints, the Brazilian rainforests and the continuing existence of the Guatemalan tree vole, the arrogance of such a move does astound me.

Companies of this size should really make sure they put their own house in order before dictating what anyone else should do.

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Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

I don't know how one goes about showing someone around this type of thing, but apparently the lease on the Island of Herm (in Guernsey, but, of course, you knew that)is up for sale.

Herm is a tax haven, so there would be no CGT or death duty and only 20% income tax. A bargain. If you've got the £15million they want for it, that is.

One downside : the buyer's neighbours will include such charmers as the Barclay brothers but you do get a manor house, 13th century chapel and 80 acres of farmland as part of the deal.

Generally, we at Just Accountants have a great deal of sympathy for people who aren't happy with their current accountant and are looking to change.

If you aren't getting the service you feel you deserve, then, sure, it's time to find a new accountant.

However, there is one caveat to this. Regardless of anything else, qualified accountants are professional people with a level of expertise that you don't possess.

It is this expertise and experience that you are paying for as a UK business. And, like it or not, expertise does cost money. You may think that you're not getting value for money because it appears that your chartered accountants aren't spending hours and hours on your accounts. But you aren't paying them for their time....you're paying for an expertise that you don't possess.

So, if you are looking for an accountant in London or Bolton or wherever, take a moment to reflect before you switch. It may not be to your benefit.

Accountancy Age seem a little surprised at the low numbers of accountants in the UK who have blogs - suggesting that the number is barely in the double figures.

Quite why the surprise, I don't know. Many UK accountants haven't even got their own domain names or proper websites yet - so having large numbers blogging is a long way off, methinks.

Accountants and other 'professionals' such as solicitors and teachers who are looking for a 100% mortgage will no longer find any joy with Scottish Widows.

The company has dropped their 100% mortgage offer for professionals in favour of a 5% deposit.

While the company itself is claiming that it is "the market" that has forced the change, this does call into question the creditworthiness of accountants and other professionals.

My view is that the professional classes should not ever receive special treatment and that all applications should be viewed on a individual basis. What's so controversial about that?

While I was checking out the rankings of our website in Google, I ran across a couple of pretty funny accountancy quotes, which I thought I'd share with you.

“I have no use for bodyguards, but I have very specific use for two highly trained certified public accountants.”
Elvis Presley

“An accountant is a man who watches the battle from the safety of the hills and then comes down to bayonet the wounded”
Unknown

“A statistician is someone who is good with numbers, but lacks the personality to be an accountant”
Unknown

Well, I thought they were funny. On similar lines, I'm collecting a few anecdotes from some of the accountants we work with and will put the best on this blog.

It looks like attempts to cut down the amount of binge and teenage drinking in the UK might backfire as major off license chains and supermarkets are putting pressure on brewers to absorb the recent alcohol tax rises.

Bargain Booze are quoted in the story as having sent a letter to suppliers, saying:

"...We will have to review the position of any brands where the retail ticket is increased in our business ... We regret to say that we cannot absorb the increases in costs that the Budget would seem to demand.' It asks suppliers to help 'by absorbing these increases within your own company'..."

My own view is that the price of alcohol in the UK has little or nothing to do with a 'binge-drinking' culture, if there even is such a thing.

Alcohol in the UK is far, far more expensive than in continental Europe and if the government are insistent on trying to legislate our lifestyles, they are going to have to find more effective ways to do it.

I'm feeling obliged to post something about the budget.

There are far, far more qualified people than me to comment on the implications of this particular budget, but the overall tone of response is far from positive.

The Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph describes it as the dullest in history, while The Times concurs, suggesting that it will also be unpopular.

For some more in depth analysis of the possible consequences, Bloomberg feel that the combination of no tax rises plus increased borrowing will squeeze UK businesses while The Financial Times questions whether the Chancellor's economic forecasts are accurate.

My own view is that this is an extremely cautious budget that attempts to just weather an oncoming economic storm without really providing the tools necessary to do so. Taxing drinkers and petrol is hardly the way to do it, is it?

For some reason, this article predicting an 'Enron style scandal' in the UK seems to be generating a lot of interest at the moment.

The essence of it is that, according to a survey commissioned by a document management company, "89 per cent [of senior IT professionals] claimed that someone at their company had the capability to tamper with or lose documents to suit their own ends."

This, apparently, has the potential to lead to an Enron-style accounting scandal.

Quite why the fact that employees are not always utterly honest and could commit crimes is such a story, I don't know. But I do commend document management software company Version One, who commissioned the research, for getting their press release such wide coverage. Much respect.

Since Germany bought stolen banking records and started investigating the Liechtenstein banking network for tax fraud, there have been increasing calls within the EU to end tax havens.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a joint press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that "We will support the French presidency's aims of tackling tax havens and states operating privileged tax systems with the aim of achieving harmonized taxation" only yesterday.

However, although it may seem like the big European nations are trying to control the banking set-ups of their smaller partners, there simply isn't the legal framework to force countries like Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Monaco to hand over the names of clients to foreign governments without the individual's consent.

This alone should ensure that tax havens remain existent, not to mention that too deep a probe may reveal things other EU countries (mentioning no names) would prefer to remain hidden.

At Just Accountants, every day we talk to small and medium sized businesses who are looking for a new accountant.

We thought it would be interesting to record the reasons they were considering changing their accountants - mainly for our own internal use.

We had, rather unimaginatively, expected price to be the main issue. But it isn't.

We found that over 72% of SMEs who wanted to change their accountant did so because their accountants just didn't provide a responsive service. We got stories about emails being ignored for weeks and phone calls not being returned at all.

Personally, I think this is pretty shocking (we spoke to 600 SMEs in all). It shows that some accountants are either supremely arrogant in their dealings with clients or - and this is a far more charitable view - simply have too many clients.

Either way, it simply isn't acceptable. Luckily there are some great, responsive, client orientated accountants out there and we wish them all the best.

There will be a press release about this going out tomorrow and we're considering publishing the rest of the data on this blog.

Coming to a screen near you....Arnold Schwarzenegger is...The Accountant.

Take a look at this very funny movie parody, starring everyone' s favourite Governator as an accountant :

A recent report commissioned by the people at BACS indicates there is 18.6billion pounds in late payments owed to the UK's SMEs.

Even if these numbers are inflated, this represents a shocking amount of debt. It's no wonder that it is so difficult to get a business established in this country.

The main problem with late payments is that there is a knock-on effect. IE: Business C is owed £2,000 by Business B and therefore can't pay the £1,000 owed to Business A.

The problem is unless you only take payments for all services upfront, this is going to be a continuing problem.

My own experiences suggest that UK businesses are particularly slow payers. I dealt solely with American businesses for several years (although I was and am UK based) and they tended to pay on time every time. This despite the fact that it would be easier for a US based business to stiff me altogether.

One of the most interesting things about the survey was this :

"SMEs in the North East are the least likely to experience problems (42 per cent against the national average). North West SMEs have the best results when it comes to overdue invoices. They spend just 12 days chasing guilty suppliers and 45 per cent said they experienced late payments from time to time."

Greater London, somewhat unsurprisingly, had the most problem with overdue invoices.

I would be interested in hearing people's solutions to this problem because, to be honest, I don't have many bright ideas.

I think that toughening up laws surrounding late payments and allowing businesses to charge extremely high interest rates on late invoices might help, but further than that, I'd be interested in hearing ideas.

Over at franchising website, Making Money, there's an article that suggests that "Half of the UK’s small businesses waste more than 24 working days a year on non-core business activity such as finance, IT and human resources..."

While it is clearly true that small business owners do spend a lot of time dealing with administrative tasks, I take issue with the use of the word "waste".

Finance and human resources are essential activities and to suggest that time spent on them is wasted is simply wrong.

As part of what we do at Just Accountants, we have to visit tens, sometimes hundreds, of accountants websites every week.

And the one thing I've noticed is that pretty much every accountancy website I visit says the same thing.

"We're not like most accountants...we're different"

The phrasing may change but the sentiment is always the same.

Luckily for most accountants, clients searching around for a new accountant won't be looking at anywhere near the number of websites that we do and so may not notice this same tired claim appearing over and over again.

My advice to accountants or their web copywriters is to take a good look around the web at other sites in your industry and make sure that your claims to be different aren't actually making you the same as all your competitors.

The irony is that the claims to be "different" are usually found in tandem with claims that this accountant will provide a high level of personalised business support to clients, rather than just filling in forms at the end of the year.

However, as often as not, these type of claims are just unsupportable. If you are a 4-5 person accounting firm with 300+ clients, there just isn't the time to provide this type of support.

It is doing accountants no favours to make these claims if they are unable to back them up.

Most people probably knew that the deadline for filing self-assessment tax returns online was extended by a day because the HMRC website went down.

Um. Didn't anyone predict that January 31st would be a super high traffic day and ensure the HMRC's servers could cope with the demand. It appears not.

The thing is that, in internet terms, the additional server load wasn't that great - sites like Google, Digg and FaceBook handle far, far higher volumes each and every day with no problems and they don't have the resources of a government department.

I was intrigued by Richard Murphy's comments, however.

Murphy said "It’s tax submission deadline day and HMRC’s web site can’t handle the traffic. Don’t blame HMRC I say - just get it done on time."

If the deadline is January 31st, then filing on January 31st is getting it done on time. Or is there something I've missed ?