New Finacial Year Considerations

It’s almost that time again for the new tax year to come in, and with it no doubt some hikes in costs for consumers and businesses alike. In fact, everyone from councils to TV providers shift their deals on April fools’ day – taking the changing of the financial year as their cue to raise bills. March 31st is the last day of the current financial year so make sure you’re aware of what could be changing…

MoneySavingExpert.com founder Martin Lewis said: “[This April] one thing is certain… prices for public services are rising. Many public bodies do their annual charges assessment to coincide roughly with the new tax year and, no surprise, as usual most are going up.”

And this year almost everyone will be hit by at least one price rise – so we thought it was worth explaining a few areas that will affect business owners such as yourself.

There will be many areas affected by price rises on 1st April, namely council tax, TV licensing, energy bills, mobile call charges, water bills, NHS prescriptions, car tax and workplace pension contributions to name a few.

Now where most of these will hit us in our personal pocket, it’s worth being vigilant on your business costs. We’ve picked out the two areas that are in our interest to help you with – energy and mobile bills.

ENERGY BILLS

The big six providers – British Gas, EDF Energy, E.ON UK, npower, ScottishPower and SSE – have all announced price increases of up to 10.5% on their standard variable tariffs.

That means some 11million households will see bills rise by an average of £117. Even smaller suppliers Co-Op and Ebico have now joined in.

And it’s all thanks to the energy price cap.

The introduction of the energy price cap at the start of the year affected 11million customers who were on standard variable tariffs.

At first they saw their bills fall – by an average of £76 – but since then the cap has since been reviewed.

The new, higher, cap comes into force on April 1 and will stay in place until September.

The good news is that by switching supplier you can beat the hike – and the better news is that two suppliers have just CUT prices instead of raising them.

This is where we come in – if you haven’t already spoken to us about switching your business energy then please talk to us. With our energy partner Fidelity, we compare up to 21 providers to get you on a better tariff.

Click here for a free business energy review

MOBILE PHONE BILLS

On April 1 bills are going up for customers of three major phone networks.

Sky mobile customers are seeing bills rise 5.1%, while O2 and Vodafone customers are seeing their bills rise 2.5%.

Some 250,000 Virgin Media customers will also see rises as the network scraps a number of legacy contracts from its database. A Virgin Media spokeswoman said a “small” number of these customers could see price rises of up to £150 a year.

But that doesn’t mean customers of other networks will escape – with EE prices rising 2.7% on March 30 and Three prices going up 2.5% on May 1.

For some customers these hikes could add £150 a year to bills.

Whilst many of the increases here relate to consumer increases, remember that business mobile plans are subject to annual Retail Price Index (RPI) increases. Your network will always notify you of these in advance, and whilst they generally apply across the board switching deals isn’t always going to be beneficial. If you’re with us for your business mobile deal we’ll work with you to continually assess your usage and make sure your tariff and any inclusive bundles and bolt on services are the best fit for you.