Now, penalties are due even if there is no tax due – and if people delay in submitting the form further they could be in line to pay £1600 of fines even if there is no tax due.

All it would take would be 625,000 out of the 850,000 people who are late with their tax return to delay things longer and incur the full £1600 penalty… and we could have HMRC making a billion pounds!

HMRC have repeatedly said that they intend to use their new penalty powers for the £1600 fines… so I’m sure we will be seeing some reports where people have been caught out.

I first posted a blog about the new fines in March 2011, so they have been known about for some time.

Indeed, particularly in the current climate, now is an ideal time to invest in the future and for growth whilst your competitors are downsizing and restricting their marketing efforts.

In the past the traditional route for funding was the banks, however it is common knowledge that there are issues with this route currently.

So, what is an entrepreneur to do?

There is a limit as to how much they can invest in their own business, so when that point is reached something that may be of interest is a site called Crowdcube which supports crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is simply the process of bringing together private investors to invest amounts in growing businesses. Similar to the Dragons Den TV show, but with normal investors rather than multi-millionaires. There can also be the incentives of bonuses for investors as well.

By spreading the investment through many investors it makes it easy for people to choose which pitches to support, and the Crowdcube website handles all the technical aspects of the transaction for the investors and entrepreneurs.

It is something you may want to check out yourself at www.crowdcube.com, indeed it is a route that I am using myself for the expansion in 2012 of the taxhelp.uk.com franchise so that this can proceed at an accelerated rate: