How much time do you spend actually leading your company rather than working for it? If you’re anything like the typical owner or manager of a small business, the answer is almost certainly not nearly enough.

Will the Government’s announcement of an extension to the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) deliver an increase in the amount of credit extended to small and medium-sized enterprises? It should certainly mean more credit is available – but that doesn’t mean there will be greater demand for loans, or that SMEs previously denied access to borrowing will now find lenders any more accepting.

The RSA and Royal Bank of Scotland recently published a report which stated that while 9.5 per cent of 18-24 year olds say they intend to start their own business, only 3.6 per cent of them are doing so. Much work is being done by the government to encourage younger entrepreneurs to start their own business, and inspired by programmes like Dragons Den, the UK start-up landscape is vibrant, despite ongoing economic gloom. However, more young people need to feel inspired and empowered to pursue their own business goals, and education and mentorship play no small part in this process.

New tax incentives introduced this week for innovative companies are expected to be worth as much as £1bn a year. That’s the Government’s estimate of the cost to the taxpayer of the Patent Box, a new scheme that came into effect on 1 April offering lower corporation tax bills to companies that make money from innovation and invention. And many of those that will qualify are small and medium-sized enterprises.

Forget the Budget. The most significant announcement from the Government this week for vast numbers of small businesses was quietly slipped out 24 hours before George Osborne arrived at the Despatch Box. Much to the amazement of many small business advisers, HM Revenue & Customs announced it was postponing the introduction of “real time information” (RTI).

Small and medium-sized enterprises are back in the sights of HM Revenue & Customs – this time it’s their record keeping that the taxman is threatening to investigate.

With less than four months to go before the UK embarks on its biggest shake-up of workplace pension provision in a generation, new research suggests the majority of small and medium enterprises have made no progress at all towards compliance with the new regime.

Anyone watching the economist Paul Krugman on a series of news bulletins in recent days cannot fail to have been unnerved by his prognosis for the eurozone. Greece is already in the exit lounge, Mr Krugman told us, while the mounting problems in Spain really could spell the end for the single currency zone.

Adrian Beecroft, the Government adviser, thinks ripping up employment regulation could add 5 percentage points toBritain’sGDPin the years ahead. Senior Liberal Democrats have privately described many of his suggestions as “bonkers”. So who’s right? Is excessive protection for underperforming employees in the workplace really holding backBritain’s economy because it has left employers reluctant to take on more staff?

The tortured tale of IR35 continues. To the uninitiated, this is the section of the tax code introduced more than a decade ago by the then Labour Government, which was concerned about the number of people setting themselves up as companies when they were really just employees. Doing so enabled them to reduce their tax bills – particularly the national insurance element of the bill, since there’s no NI to pay on company dividends.

Is your business missing out on a valuable windfall? If you haven’t stayed on top of your entitlement to capital allowances, the answer may be yes. Research just produced by one tax expert specialising in this area suggests British businesses have failed to claim as much as £70bn in this type of tax relief, with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) particularly likely to be due a rebate.

What is to be done about Britain’s late payments culture? Though legislation introduced to bare down on late payers has now been in force for a decade, the problem remains endemic in the British economy, with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often hit particularly hard.

It’s fair to say there has been some scepticism about the Government’s stated aim of increasing the number of public sector contracts that go to small and medium-sized enterprises. Cynics point out that Whitehall remains miles off its target of awarding 25 per cent of all government contracts to SMEs and that there is in any case confusion over the figure. Does it mean 25 per cent by value or number, for example, and does the target apply to local authorities as well as central government?