A little story.
I'd been contracting for three years and was summarily benched along with many, many others in the April of 1990. This was pre-Internet obviously and I'd come from a family where my dad had worked for the same company for over 30 years, so I was a bit "green" regarding self-employment (to put it mildly).
After six months, things were starting to get a bit tight. I was up-to-date with my VAT as I did my own returns but was unsure how much tax was due on the company reserves, which were being depleted fast. Now, my accountant appeared to be a bit dodgy - he sold me a couple of tulip endowment policies, took a £250 retainer and I got a letter from him every six months or so telling me how much tax to pay. And that was it. I'd not heard from him for about nine months and he wasn't picking up the phone so I travelled to his office in Wanstead, East London. Having never been there before, it appeared to be above a shop but the door was locked and there was no name out the front. I was standing in the street, looking up at the first floor like a lemon, when the shopkeeper comes out and asks me "did he owe you any money?". "No", says I, "he was my accountant". "Well," continues the shopkeeper, "last week the police turned up, took him away in handcuffs and then trading standards came and took away all his filing cabinets and changed the locks".
Great. So I speak to a mate who had a proper business and he recommended his own accountant. When he started looking into my books, it transpired that my accountant had been arrested for fraud and that my company had been struck off nine months previously without my knowledge and not only had I been unknowingly trading (before being benched), I'd also been paying the VAT and tax for a no longer existing business! All because he'd been pocketing my fees, tax, God knows what else and not doing the returns. Valuable lesson learned.
I'd been contracting for three years and was summarily benched along with many, many others in the April of 1990. This was pre-Internet obviously and I'd come from a family where my dad had worked for the same company for over 30 years, so I was a bit "green" regarding self-employment (to put it mildly).
After six months, things were starting to get a bit tight. I was up-to-date with my VAT as I did my own returns but was unsure how much tax was due on the company reserves, which were being depleted fast. Now, my accountant appeared to be a bit dodgy - he sold me a couple of tulip endowment policies, took a £250 retainer and I got a letter from him every six months or so telling me how much tax to pay. And that was it. I'd not heard from him for about nine months and he wasn't picking up the phone so I travelled to his office in Wanstead, East London. Having never been there before, it appeared to be above a shop but the door was locked and there was no name out the front. I was standing in the street, looking up at the first floor like a lemon, when the shopkeeper comes out and asks me "did he owe you any money?". "No", says I, "he was my accountant". "Well," continues the shopkeeper, "last week the police turned up, took him away in handcuffs and then trading standards came and took away all his filing cabinets and changed the locks".
Great. So I speak to a mate who had a proper business and he recommended his own accountant. When he started looking into my books, it transpired that my accountant had been arrested for fraud and that my company had been struck off nine months previously without my knowledge and not only had I been unknowingly trading (before being benched), I'd also been paying the VAT and tax for a no longer existing business! All because he'd been pocketing my fees, tax, God knows what else and not doing the returns. Valuable lesson learned.
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