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VAT Mistakes

Feb3

If your company makes a deliberate VAT mistake, which results in less VAT being paid over to HMRC than is correctly due, you as the director of that company can be issued personally with a penalty. This very rarely happens, but the VATman does have the power to impose such penalties where he can show the underpaid VAT was due to the dishonest conduct of one or more of the directors.

Two recent cases illustrate the types of situations where a personal penalty can be imposed:

Mr Brookes is the sole director of a building company. A VAT inspection found suppliers’ invoices to support VAT inputs were missing. Brookes obtained ‘copy’ invoices from the main suppliers, but those ‘copies’ were found to be very poor forgeries. Brookes was served with a personal penalty of £43,753 which was 60% of the over claimed VAT.

Mr & Mrs Walker failed to submit eight successive VAT returns for their company. The VAT office issued estimated VAT assessments to the company which were less than the VAT eventually found to be due, and the Walkers did not challenge those estimated assessments. The Walkers were served with personal penalties totalling £194,214.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.

 

Disclaimer

 

Mistakes and Learning from Others

Aug21

Don’t Worry About Mistakes

Everybody makes mistakes. Don’t listen to those who say you’ll learn from them. May be you will, may be you won’t. After all, Henry Ford went bankrupt twice before becoming a success.

Don’t worry about making mistakes if you want to succeed in business. You need to decide for yourself if you can live with failure knowing you tried your best. Is that not better than not to have tried at all? Many successful entrepreneurs believe it’s better to have tried and failed than never have had the courage to try.

You need to take action and get started. Sure, you don’t know everything but don’t wait forever planning or you’ll do nothing.

If you don’t know about taxes, so what? There’s no tax to worry about until you start making some money anyway.

And don’t beat a dead horse. Recognise when something is not going to work, cut your losses and move on. There’s no rule about you can only start one business in your lifetime. You have 365 new chances every year to accomplish your goals.

Read And Learn From Others.

The most successful people have an insatiable need to know more, rather than defending what they already know. Read books, magazines, learn from others and continue to move forward. Try to learn something new everyday.

You can learn a lot from what other businesses are doing, especially those that are not in your industry. What ideas can you take from totally different types of businesses and apply them to yours. In sales, manufacturers tend to have used a field sales force, retailers use adverts and professional services use referrals but think how much more successful they could all be if they added methods from other businesses. Use the principle of duality by looking at other businesses. That’s what we’re doing in this report.

Fed Ex copied the banks method of clearing cheques overnight to develop an overnight package delivery service.

There was a double-glazing firm who offered free window installation if you signed up to have your windows fitted before the World Cup started and England happened to win. A firm of accountants copied the concept but applied it to accountancy services, adding the bonus that if Scotland won, it was free accountancy services for life – a totally risk free offer! In reality they placed a bet at the bookies to cover themselves and this was their marketing cost. This beat their conventional marketing offers many times over.

So look and learn from others. Adapt and adopt what you read here as makes sense to you.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Southside Accountants Wimbledon & London.