Was it May 1st yesterday or April 1st?

Was it May 1st yesterday or April 1st?

Didn't find your answer?

Received a letter this morning from those nice people at Local Compliance starting " Every year we check the VAT returns of a number of businesses......." As part of my check I would like to talk about your business......." If we do not hear from you by 9th May we will consider disallowing the input tax shown on the return"

Not a problem. Client has nothing to hide and is covered by my firm's fee protection policy, so full recovery of any time spent.

Telephoned HMRC to let them know that I am dealing with their letter only to be advised that the amount of input VAT claimed for the quarter in question was ................................ £6.54!

Replies (5)

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By Rachael-SimplifiedAccounting
02nd May 2014 12:47

!

Does anyone at HMRC have any common sense?!

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Replying to Alex_T:
RLI
By lionofludesch
02nd May 2014 13:33

No

Rachael-SimplifiedAccounting wrote:

Does anyone at HMRC have any common sense?!

I've yet to find one.

I had an enquiry into a trader who'd had a bad year through ill-health a normally profitable business which had made a loss of about £100 because the proprietor (one of the two revenue earners) had been ill for around six months.

"Why is this stock estimated?"

"Because the owner struggled to count it from his hospital bed."

"Well, we think it's £5000 more than you say."

"OK - well that's fine - I expect you're right.  You do realise that there still won't be any tax payable but next year's tax will be about £1500 less than it would have been, don't you ?"

Stock not mentioned again.  No adjustment to the loss.

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Stepurhan
By stepurhan
02nd May 2014 12:59

So many things wrong

8 days to respond. Only 5 if you exclude the bank holiday weekend. How long do they take to respond to us?

That not answering a check in this timeframe is apparently grounds for HMRC to assume a return is entirely wrong. How else can you interpret "we will consider disallowing the input tax shown on the return"?

No de minimis. Sending the letter out must have cost more than the input tax at stake.

Appalling that they can behave like this.

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By rjoconnor81
02nd May 2014 13:01

Turn for the worse

Over the last couple of years HMRC have become more and more difficult, one to get in contact with, then to deal with, they behave like bullies, they don't see logic or common sense. The default response is "it's your mistake, not ours", which the majority of the time is wrong as well.  It is becoming a real mountain to climb with them and I don't like the way it is going.  

 

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By bendybod
02nd May 2014 16:08

Targets

During a recent compliance visit, which happened to be with an inspector who recognised me from a previous visit to a then client of mine, I got chatting with the inspector as we both agreed that her visit was entirely ridiculous and a waste of everyone's time.  I think she managed to drag it out to an hour, but mainly by chatting.  She told me that the edict from on high was to launch an investigation into every reclaim because they were in danger of missing a particular target and reclaims were an easy way of increasing their visits that related to said target.  Probably a similar thing going on with your local office and they've chosen slightly different criteria with no logic checks as to whether or not it is reasonable.  As for the timeframe, it is always the case that what is allowed in terms of the taxpayer contacting them is wholly less reasonable than the terms for them contacting us.  I phoned this week to explain that we'd accidentally paid our Corp Tax into our PAYE account.  I was informed that it was no problem to get it transferred but that the current timeframe for dealing with such requests was TWO MONTHS!!

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