Me: Have you thought about trading through a limited company?
Client: No, I don't want to be VAT registered.
What gems have you heard that suggests the message hasn't got across?
Replies (28)
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bank rec
CLIENT: I've reconciled the bank.
ME: Great! Can I see it please?
CLIENT: See what?
ME: The bank reconciliation.
CLIENT: I've ticked each transaction on the bank statement to show I've checked it to my system.
ME: Oh.
No Debtors
The treasurer of a club once assured my boss "We don't have any debtors because we pay all our bills as soon as they come in."
The eternal non sequitur
Client "Here are my records."
Hands you somethng that can best be described as all the paperwork that was within reach when he thought to come in stuffed in a plastic bag, plus some random figures written on an envelope if you're lucky.
Took a call a few months back from angry customer.
Customer: "You have charged us VAT on your invoice"
I take details and look up the invoice and job...
Me: "We have charged you VAT because it is a vatable service and we are VAT registered"
Customer: "Why have you done that?? We are not VAT registered so you shouldn't have charges us!!"
Sigh...
Me: You being not vat registered is irrelevant, as we are vat registered we must charge you the vat.
Customer: kdhojbdjdnsjkndfkojafwn
Customer hangs up
Seen within a set of accounts
"We have prepared these accounts without carrying out an adult"
True reporting?
Have you any evidence that they did actually transport a full-grown person to an exterior location in the course of preparation of the accounts?
Can I claim for...
... a hire car for three weeks to get to a job?
Me: Wow, well done, it must be a lucrative contract?
Client (sole trader): Yes but you'll claim it back as an expense for me though won't you?
HMRC & Companies House
Client ; " I have had a letter from tax man saying I have not filed my Annual Return ".
Me : "No, that will be from Companies House"
Client " No it's from HMRC, if I don't file I'll be fined".
Me : "No you won't, your company will be struck off".
Client : "Okay, whatever. but I have still got to pay my tax to Companies House ".
I am off to lie down in a dark room until 1st February !!!
Double standards
Highlights from the tax return process for a client:
Me: What expenses did you incur on your let property?
Client: Here's a list, plus I estimate I spent £50 on adverising, roughly £100 on cleaning..... etc etc
Two weeks later -
Client: Thanks for the tax return, but I forgot to give you dividend figures for XYZ Plc, so where did you get the £1,510 from?
Me: Our firm subscribes to a service that allows me to look up dividends paid by listed companies
Client: Oh! but I've checked the vouchers I forgot to give you and your figures are 4p short. That's rather a material difference isn't it?
Me: (laughing assuming my client is demonstrating his dry sense of humour) We'll I guess so!
Client: (stern silence)........I want you to amend the return!!
A thousand thoughts flash through my mind, some of them not polite ones. The client is not for turning; there goes another 30 minutes of wasted time in January.
Brilliant thread
.. just what I needed as I struggle with my only limited company's accounts (my own!).
but I made no profit
lost count of the times I have heard "but I make no profit on the rental property, the rent hardly covers the mortgage"
Sole trader and class 4 nic
We had a new sole trader client some years ago. On finishing the accounts and tax return he came in to approve them. As we discussed the tax computation he remarked:
"What's this class 4 national insurance?"
Me: All self employed pay class 4 national insurance above a certain threshold.
Client: No, I've never paid it before.
Me: Well you do now.
Client approved return and left disgruntled but did phone to say:
Yes, I did pay it once before.
Client didn't come back the following year. Thank God.
A man
Came in last week with books and records stating he was self employed and he needed to do a tax return. As he was in the office and I did have 10 mins or so to spare, I asked him a couple of questions and explained that he would need to make a proper appointment, I told him that from the information he had given me he could expect our charges to be in the region of £xxx but that may change when I take a closer look at things.
His response was" why do I have to pay you I made a loss, you people make me laugh, you tell me I have to make a tax return then want to charge me for it"
Text from client
Had a text from a client yesterday:
HMRC have sent me a letter saying I have to pay £530.75 tax in January. What's this about - I've never paid tax before.
My reply:
That's the £530.75 I told you would be due in January when I sent you your tax return last month.
Client:
Oh yes - that must be it! Thanks.
Makes me realise why I haven't taken on any personal clients for a long while!
Cathy
The eternal question
Client: I can't have made that much profit. If I have, where is it?
Me: Do you want the long answer or the short answer?
Client: The short answer will do.
Me: You've spent it
Client: What's the long answer
Me: You've spent all of it
I am also able to read minds...
Phone call from client: Ive just had a letter from HMRC, what does it say?
Me: Have you not opened it?
Client: Oh no I cant do that, what does it say?
Me: Open it and find out
Client: Yes, but what will it say?
Me: I dont know unless you open it and read it to me
Client: I thought you could tell me what it says and then I might be able to send it back unopened.
client showed me his bookkeeping spreadsheet this morning
client "Where does this figure in expenses that I paid myself come from?"
Me - "I don't know, where did you get it from?"
Director's Loan account is NOT the same as...
A Director's Current account:
Client, phone message: "I need you to phone me, urgently - I'm going to start a Directors Current Account with my company - I can pay myself tax free that way and I can have one as well as the Director's Loan account I already have - why haven't you told me this before??!"
Me: by email, so as to have a trail in writing with this particular client: "I'm afraid a Director's Current Account is just another name for a Director's Loan Account - accountants tend to use the two interchangeably".
Later, in the inevitable follow up phonecall
Client "But it can't be the same - a current account isn't a loan you see. So it can't have any of that Director's LOAN charge business........"
conversation goes on for a good few more minutes...
Client "So, if I only need £30k, that'll be OK on a Director's Current account, won't it? They won't think that's a loan?"
Another route to tax free income
Meeting with client to finalise his tax affairs for the year, as usual ask if there's anything else I need to know about and jokingly ask if there's any cash sales he hasn't told me about. "Well a few thousand but I bank those into an ISA so that's all tax free isn't it".
When they try and do it themselves...
A client, whose accounts we always end up doing in two/three year batches (no. definitely not suitable for incorporation!) phones last week. Has tried doing it himself as he's so far behind, gives up, then expects us to drop everything (including the clients who dutifully got everything in on time and who we're finalising prior to a relaxing Christmas).
Or another one for whom we couldn't tie up the VAT reconciliation (he's on the FRS).
"How did you draw up the figures on this quarter?"
"Oh, the usual way, then I made an adjustment". Now, 'usual way' in this case means a flat rate percentage within (if we're lucky) 1% of the correct figure, maybe based on gross turnover, maybe net, and sometimes on a cash basis. Anyway, turns out he had read something on the HMRC website (*alarm bells*) about the FRS first year discount which he hadn't known about and so made an appropriate adjustment. Yes, you guessed it, he's been VAT registered for years.
"And so I phoned the VAT helpdesk and they told me to do that adjustment." quoth he. I then explained why we hadn't told him about the discount, that the 'first year' refers to the first year of registration, not first year on the FRS, and yes I know the VAT helpdesk told you ... yes, but ... I kn... look, it wouldn’t be the first time the helpdesk have got it wrong (though 'garbage in garbage out' sprang to mind)…
quite common
Often clients seem to think they should get a deduction for all the work they've done for free on their BTL properties.
Pub talk
Him: "I do pay tax"
Me; No you don't - you pay VAT on the copious pints of Guinness you drink"
Him: "I do pay... council tax"
Me: No you don't - the lady you live with claims she lives alone"
Him: "What about car tax- I pay that"
Me "So?"
Him "I'm going to complain to my MP"
Me: "You don't vote!"
Annual Accounts and CT Return
Client: your price for the Annual Accounts is far too high, it won't take you that long. If you tell me what to do, I can do most of it and save the cost.
Draft Accounts
Sending draft accounts clearly marked draft.
Me by email: Here are the draft accounts for your review and consideration. Please let me know if they meet your expectations.
Client: I've signed them, please file them with Companies House.