Company not being used - reduced accountancy fees.

[rnsuk]

Guys.

My accountant is willing to reduce the monthly fees substantially once trading has stopped, However they are charging nearly £100 to suspend VAT ( and possibly £100 to resume again ) .
Is this normal behaviour?

A few years ago , decided to go travelling and they just reduced the amount and incerased it again when I got my next contract. No mention of VAT suspending charges

Cheers

[ladymuck]

You could always do the VAT registration cancellation yourself. Having looked at the form, £100 isn't an unreasonable charge for providing a service on top of their normal work. How much do you charge for additional work outside the originally defined scope?

VAT registration: Cancel registration - GOV.UK

You don't mention whether the accountant you were with 'a few years ago' is the same one? How long were you travelling for? Did it cover a full VAT quarter? Was it for sufficently long enough that your annual turnover was going to be under the £85k annual limit? Are you comparing apples and apples?

[LondonManc]

Guys.

My accountant is willing to reduce the monthly fees substantially once trading has stopped, However they are charging nearly £100 to suspend VAT ( and possibly £100 to resume again ) .
Is this normal behaviour?

A few years ago , decided to go travelling and they just reduced the amount and incerased it again when I got my next contract. No mention of VAT suspending charges

Cheers

As ladymuck says, it's free to remove/add YourCo from the VAT scheme. Deregister your limited company yourself once you know that you're going to be invoicing less than 85k. Just remember to re-register next year if it's looking more positive.

[Maslins]

Whilst companies can of course de-register for VAT, and potentially re-register later on, I wouldn't recommend it for short periods of reduced activity. If you're a FreeAgent user, as things stand, it would need you to create a brand new FreeAgent account following re-registration. It can cope with registering, and de-registering, but not then re-registering.

If activity will likely be reduced for a few months before returning to normal, generally it's more effort than it's worth to change anything. You can't just pause a VAT registration or company more generally, then unpause later.

[rnsuk]

Thanks all.

For brevity , I have said "I" but the company in question is my neffers. Same accountant as mine though.

His company wasn't then or ever since has got to the VAT threshold. Really in hindsight , should never have been registered.

£100 may be in order but the turnover of this company is sub £25k. He is not the highest paid contractor on here and has had time off ill.
I will try and assist him to do it himself.


As for the travelling , that was me and my company same accountant 6 months of no trading. 5 months of Thailand Laos Vietnam Cambodia Myanmar , Goa and the Himalayas. It was wonderful. My trips this year are to the driveway and garden ( to put the bins out) .

[LondonManc]

Just deregister then I'd say. Sounds like neffers isn't going to have to worry about VAT for some time.

[rnsuk]

Just deregister then I'd say. Sounds like neffers isn't going to have to worry about VAT for some time.

Agreed. The reason he wants to suspend is his last client said "Leave or be permy" In this climate , looking for work is a bit iffy . His type of work (rung 1 of IT) has all dried up.

Accountant suggested not making hasty decisions so is opting for this non trading malarky but might be better paying the accountant £700+ to close the company down and be done with it.

[Chart Accountancy]

If the company ceases to make taxable supplies and closes the business totally, then the VAT de-registration must be cancelled within 30 days. If the company has ceased making taxable supplies temporarily then the registration can be kept but as soon as the business has ceased to make taxable supplies permanently the business must de-register for VAT. The de-registration could in practice be delayed for a few months if the business ceased trading to allow time for final bills to be paid, capital assets sold, etc.