VAT Inspection

[dazza12]

I've just had the dreaded call from HMCE, trying to arrange an appointment for a VAT inspection. The guy was very unhelpful, and wouldn't agree a time, just a day (so I lose a day's invoicing).

I tried to arrange for him to call my accountant to set this up, as they have done this before for many people. He insisted this was impossible, despite my accountant having hosted hundreds of these inspections in the past. He said they were apparently 'cracking down' on this process, however my accountant has heard nothing regarding this and is still taking appointments to this day. Got my accountant to ring him, but he claims it's now out of his hands.

Don't you just love civil servants?

I've now started the process of moving my registered office to my accountants, along with making him the company secretary, hopefully to avoid this in the future but mainly to give my accountant the authority to act on the company's behalf.

Has anyone had this problem before? And is anyone aware of whether I have a leg to stand on if I argue with them? The main problem is that my accountant holds all my accounting details, all I hold is the receipts. It would be more convenient to have this meeting held at the accountants.

[planetit]

Your story reminded me of this article on the QDOS web site

www.qdosconsulting.com/showarticle.pl?id=456

[fiddleabout]

I think you must have been unlucky.

In the days when I had a local accountant (which meant I did all the day to day accounting, PAYE, and VAT and they charged me more than my current accountant) Mrs. Fiddle got a call from the VAT man and she arranged for him to speak to me when I got home.

We agreed on a Friday afternoon (as I quit work at 1:00 on Fridays) telephone inspection the following week. All he wanted to do was check that I understood the principals of VAT and was keeping adequate records. It took about half an hour and was in no way stressful at all.

I think all these things are highly dependent on the individual inspector.

[dazza12]

As it now stands, the guy at the HMCE has now agreed to have the appointment at the Accountant's office. I've just got to be available on my mobile that day.

I'm now busy hunting receipts, as I seem to have lost 2 months worth to the missus tidying up - in other words she sees a pile of paperwork and puts it in a 'safe place'. Going to ban her from the office - or at least the end of the bedroom that acts as the office.

What I might do from this point onwards is scan in every item of paperwork I have for the business, and archive it onto CD. That way I can send the accountant copies of receipts without having to rely on the Royal Mail to lose it.

I've now made my accountant co sec, and moved my registered office to his premises, along with advising HMCE that my address is now at my accountants. What's amazing is that this was agreed yesterday afternoon, and I got all the relevant documents in the post this morning, fully completed and waiting for my signature. I've had excellent service from this accountant, and if anyone's looking for one, I highly recommend TreasureGuard in Bristol.