Tax

[kev 1]

Has anybody filled one of these in online and was it complicated or straight forward? I am self employed and thinking about doing this myself to cut out the accountants big bill.......

[artful badger]

i dont have any personal experience of this, but i would recomend using an accountant, they know all the little ways of saving your money, loop holes etc, he'll probably save you alot more than you pay him

[kev 1]

Thats what i thought but after about 3 years of paying him his money and him telling me i owe the taxman the same ish or more than i had to cough up to him,i decided to get rid of him and try myself....

[kev 1]

[barrowboy]

Not very wise Kev . Sooner or later you will get a tax inspection ,we've all had them and thats when you find out why he's worth every penny . As much as we hate it , but at the end of the day it can save a lot of heart break . I friend of mine did his own for years untill they came to see his books and was told he owed them over 40k over the five years he had been working for himself .And it was upto him to prove to them he did not . Which he could not as his books were a mess ,had to pack up his business and after a year fighting them had to settle for almost 30k . I realy begrudge paying my accountant such amounts but I would be useless trying to stand against the taxman he would no dout tie me up in knot's . as would the VAT man .

 

 

Edited August 5, 2008 by barrowboy

[Blackbart]

And on the other side of the coin.I was told last year i owed the tax man,vat man and just about any other man you can think of thousands of pounds because my accountant wasnt doing his job properly.So there you are,even if you have an accountant do your books it still might not save you from the money grabbing life wreckers at the inland revenue.

From seeing the tax form after the accountant filled it in,you only fill in about 4 sections, so you may aswell have a go.

[kev 1]

Too true Blackbart as what happened to you also happened to my brother last year...I am only a Brickie subcontracting and not earning a massive wage as i am not the ganger,so i would not owe thousands of pounds surely?

[kev 1]

But as you say Barrow Boy the Tax /vat Man will always win......

[mirokujames]

dads argument has always been employ the best accountant you can afford because sooner or later you will get an inspection and if its reputanle accountant its likely to be less of a worry and less problems will be found if any

[Fatcatsplat]

I filled in my tax return the first year they went online - Cocked it up magnificently and ended up looking like i owed them about 16 grand extra (Born genius!) - Took a whole lot of phone calls, letters and time to convince them i had made a mistake and it came very close to a court appearance.

 

Moral of the story - Spend a couple of quid on an accountant - They tend to actually save you money anyway by knowing what you can claim relief on.

[lurcherboy]

I get charged £275 a year by a man who gets 12 carrier bags of reciepts and invoices from me every year.

 

No tax bill so far so money well spent in my opinion

 

 

 

 

LB

[Blackbart]

Has anybody on here actualy had a tax inspection/investigation ??Lots of people saying you will get one but havent heard anyone say they have had one.I have been self employed more or less since i left school and i havent had one yet !!

[mickeylove]

Anyone recommend a good (cheap) accountant in the Burton area, Im in the same boat as Kev1.

[mirokujames]

dad had one not so long ago there was no problems, it was just routine

[starlight32]

Has anybody on here actualy had a tax inspection/investigation ??Lots of people saying you will get one but havent heard anyone say they have had one.I have been self employed more or less since i left school and i havent had one yet !!

 

I have had the worst of all......Vat investigation. Lucky enough I pay the insurance against costs should one arise.

 

After all the dust had settled 9 months later my accountant reckoned he would have been invoicing me a bill for £12,000.

 

I have always worked on the philosophy that the more you pay an accountant the better he or she is and the more money you get back.... Right or wrong it works for me.

[petethegeek]

I have been filing my tax returns online for a number of years now and, being self-employed but in a relatively straightforward tax position, it works well for me.

 

Bear in mind that filing online does not alter the underlying process, it merely presents you with a different way of doing it. Similar to buying your books by filling in a few boxes on a screen before clicking your mouse on the amazon website, as opposed to going into Waterstones and browsing the shelves. As has been discussed above it doesn't replace a good accountant/bookkeeper if you already have the need for one.

 

Initial registration used to be a bit of a pain but only needs to be done once. After that you can complete the form online over as many sessions as you wish - a copy of your partially completed form is kept centrally - before you choose to submit it.

 

The other advantage is that all the calculations are done for you at the press of a button, and can be done as many times as you like prior to submission.

 

I must admit that the first time I did it I ended up filling in the form online but then, on completion, copying the data onto a paper form and posting it. Nowadays however, the whole process is so smooth I just do it all online.

[codling99]

ive had an inspection 2 years ago,they wanted all bank statements,building society statements,credit card,all acounts and everything of my wifes took them just over 9 months to find that my books were in perfect order and i didnt owe them a penny,my accountant was even shocked cos he reckon s they allways find a few quid somewhere and said they wont rush to check me out again now cos the inspection costs them a few grand to do but i allways have an accountant,cos i couldnt do the employee bit of the tax for myself is quite easy but glad i had one when inspector came knocking

[malkiserow]

Filling in the form online is fairly straightforward, the maths is done without fault and the process works very well.

 

If your income stream is simple, you have hardly any messy stuf/receipts etc you may consider buying a tax guide and doing it yourself. Once you get into something more of a business then the accountant should be useful.

[Ice]

Ive had a tax inspection, all it takes is one jellous person to grass you up and thats it. Not fun but if you are honest declare what you have earnt, what all your expenses are (with all receipts to prove) hand it to them and they will tell you the tax bill.

 

Its not rocket science but can be confusing, if your not completly sure, get an accountant, also if your tax return is going to be a couple of thousand id get an accountant as if your not totally sure it is better to be safe than sorry..

[Dr W]

I'm an accountant and I would suggest that if you are looking for one you spend a bit of time checking a few places out to find one you are comfortable with and trust. I would be careful about using a one man band with no qualitifications and there are plenty of them out there. Much better to find a chartered or certified one who is covered by the rules of their insitutes and who you can complain to if they do a bad job, they are also forced to have PI insurance in case you need to sue.

 

It's also worth considering getting fee insurance which for about £150 a year covers your accountants fees in the event of an inspection.

 

My only other advice is to make sure you are completly honest with your accountant, tell them everything and keep them up to date as there's generally little that can be done after the event but plenty that could be done before.

 

You will also save fees if you can at least put your information onto a spreadsheet, you're paying for an accoutant's time so the more of the basic work you do yourself, the cheaper the fee will likely be. I would suggest that every week you take an hour or so to update your books and records and this way it never becomes a mamouth job which you dread as the filing deadlines are approaching. If you go to an accountant in January saying can you do my tax you will likely pay a premium as they will be very busy, so do yourself a favour and get organised.

[al4x]

I'm with DRW don't do it yourself, there are lots of theoretical allowances you can use that you won't take advantage of yourself. I do all our book keeping etc and though we're a small company I just put everything into sage as I go takes 10 minutes a day if that. The programme then works out pretty much everything and the figures just go to the accountant to do the tax return.

So far in 8 years I've had 1 VAT inspection that was almost a pleasure he made one recommendation and that was it went away happy. What I'd say is if you are paying a lot you either need to start doing some of the work yourself as DRW says or swap accountants but generally they will save you more money than they cost you.

[chippy18]

I'm an accountant and I would suggest that if you are looking for one you spend a bit of time checking a few places out to find one you are comfortable with and trust. I would be careful about using a one man band with no qualitifications and there are plenty of them out there. Much better to find a chartered or certified one who is covered by the rules of their insitutes and who you can complain to if they do a bad job, they are also forced to have PI insurance in case you need to sue.

 

It's also worth considering getting fee insurance which for about £150 a year covers your accountants fees in the event of an inspection.

 

My only other advice is to make sure you are completly honest with your accountant, tell them everything and keep them up to date as there's generally little that can be done after the event but plenty that could be done before.

 

You will also save fees if you can at least put your information onto a spreadsheet, you're paying for an accountant's time so the more of the basic work you do yourself, the cheaper the fee will likely be. I would suggest that every week you take an hour or so to update your books and records and this way it never becomes a mammoth job which you dread as the filing deadlines are approaching. If you go to an accountant in January saying can you do my tax you will likely pay a premium as they will be very busy, so do yourself a favour and get organised.

 

Excellent advice there.

 

I have recently had an inspection and i am now really glad that i have fee insurance.

 

Personally i think my accountant is worth his weight in gold. Mine is not the largest of businesses but i do employ

some staff direct and i also have sub-contract trades working for me, so he certainly earns every penny he charges me.

My wife certainly helps as far as my accountant fees go as she keeps great spreadsheets and files every receipts, invoice, statement or anything remotely concerned with the business in order which is then ready to hand over to the account for processing.

 

I cant really comment as far as doing your returns on line if just doing your own as a subby, but to me an accountant is

a must.

 

Cheers

[taz24]

.

 

I had an accountant but after about six weeks of unreturned calls and emails I binned him.

I did a spread sheet on excell and put all my income and outgoings in. When it came to the

filling in of the forms I just book an appointment with the tax office and go round with all my

paperwork, receipts and invoices. A couple of hours work and its all sorted. Never had any

problems with my local office and if you bother to get to know them they are just normal

people doing a job. The staff even advised me on saving money and how to make charatable

donations and other vital information that can be used to minimise the amounts paid.

 

I'm a one man owner operator with no staff except the wife and we are not VAT registered

so the amounts I deal with are not that great.

 

Cheers taz.

Edited August 6, 2008 by taz24

[al4x]

Taz you may well be missing out on a lot of the notional benefits that you can claim and extra expenses, these a decent acountant will know and save you a packet, my sister is a childminder and pays next to nothing once her accountant is done with the books

[cubix]

I use taxcalc - it's excellent. You put the numbers in and it works it all out for you and prints off the forms and will remember what you have done in previous years for payments on account etc.