Successive governments have failed to stem the ongoing late payment practices that still hamper small businesses, despite introducing new legislation and creating the Small Business Commissioner's Office. Incredibly, 50,000 small businesses fail annually because of late payments, and over £23bn is owed to small and medium sized businesses- yet the Small Business Commissioner's Office lamely boasts that it has recovered less than £7.5m of unpaid invoices for small firms since it was set up in 2017. It's no more than a drop in the ocean! They have also publicly named only 8 (yes eight) poor payers- they are Holland & Barrett, G4S, Bupa, Bombardier Transportation, Zurich Insurance, Jordans & Ryvita, Incentive FM and Sambro International. You can see the official reports on these serial offenders here , quietly tucked away on a website. You could be forgiven in thinking this is to avoid shame. Do small businesses even know the Small Business Commissioner's Office exists, let alone that it has a mandate to support small businesses in recovering unpaid debt? Do large unethical firms like those named above, and small unethical firms, understand the harm that failing to pay within agreed terms and within the law has on small firms? Possibly not, but less open to ambiguity is that they clearly don't care and are not incentivised to get their payment practices in order. So, make sure your voice is heard! A government consultation has opened to get the views of businesses on increasing the powers of the Small Business Commissioner's Office, extending their scope to include small as well as large bad payers, sanctions against late payers, powers to enforce compliance with information requests. The consultation closes on 24 December. Don't just let this pass you by, have your say now. Complete the Consultation here.

R&D Tax Credits aren't the domain of large firms. You may be surprised at what you can claim for.