'Time to Pay' may be scrapped in Budget

Posted by PM | on Fri, 18/06/2010 - 10:36 3181 6 comments

HMRC has toughened its stance on VAT deferral requests and recent reports suggest ‘Time to Pay’ may be abolished altogether in next week’s Budget.

The average VAT deferral request agreed by HMRC under the ‘Time to Pay’ scheme is £18,840, compared to an average refusal amount of £117,216, according to figures from finance provider Syscap. This means businesses looking to defer more than £19,000 could run into difficulties.

Continued...

OK for VAT & PAYE

JCresswellTax | Thu, 17/06/2010 - 17:16 | Permalink

I can understand scrapping time to pay for VAT and PAYE as the money is never really the company's.

They are just acting as a collection agent for HMRC so why should they have time to pay over what isn't theirs in the first place !!

It should stay for CT, Self Assessment etc.

Time to Pay

Chris Wise | Fri, 18/06/2010 - 10:50 | Permalink

Its been getting pregressively worse to put one in place for several months

Scrapping time to pay

cymraeg_draig | Sat, 19/06/2010 - 19:10 | Permalink

Combined with the refusal of the banks to lend that would be a great way to strangle small businesses and swell the dole queues.

Would they then ever get their money?

morgani | Sun, 20/06/2010 - 19:09 | Permalink

Agree with the earlier point regarding PAYE and VAT. At the moment a lot of small businesses are only able to continue because of time to pay agreements. If they are no longer offered, with banks not lending businesses may not be able to continue. Where will HMRC get their money from then?

‘Time to Pay’ may be scrapped in Budget

arprice | Mon, 21/06/2010 - 13:39 | Permalink

Speaking as an insolvency practitioner I would welcome the additional business such a move would generate. Speaking as a businessman however I think it would be ludicrous and could cause considerable damage to the progress of economic recovery in the UK.

Cash flow

mikewhit | Tue, 22/06/2010 - 09:18 | Permalink

I'm sure businesses would not mind paying interest at BoE base rate on their 'time to pay' VAT owed, since many of them are having to rely on the VAT funds in the bank (Ok, ok 'it's not theirs in the first place') to tide them over when orders suddenly stop or become less frequent.