Tax Problems caused by lying accountant

Sjrs

Long story short, I have been PAYE for over 5 years and keep receiving SA tax forms due to claiming temporary work mileage.

So I asked my accountant to fill in my SA form and he done these for 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 with no problems (and a rebate). But for 2009 he decided to take it upon himself and make it all up to get it in on time. Since then it was challenged by the Tax man and he has stated that I owe the £2500 to be paid by Feb 2010...

I don't have £2500 to give him, I also don't think I should take the blame for this.

What can I do? Can I sue him for the money?

CIS

Has he got professional indemnity insurance ?, you could try this but the ultimate signing off of the accounts would be by yourself to say they are OK so HMRC will still look to you for the money.

chrismac1

There are various courses of action open to you if this person is QUALIFIED. You can threaten to report him to the Institute, which normally prompts accountants who are not doing the right thing to start doing it. You can claim under the PII but may need to provide some evidence that he has acted negligently. Note this:

1. Submitting the return based on estimates is perfectly acceptable provided this was stated on the notes within the return.
2. Where it is necessary to submit this sort of return to beat the deadline, and more accurate information later becomes available, the accountant in my view was negligent in leaving the inaccurate return on the system. It's easy enough to re-submit.

I've had to put in several estimated returns this year because I inherited 25 clients from an accountant who suddenly died. Some of the records clients had left with her could not be located, so there was no alternative but to put estimates forward. No problem, this is clearly stated on the returns. However, if these records were to suddenly turn up, in my view I would be ocntractually obliged to re-submit the accounts and rerturns based on this information.

Sjrs

I'm not too sure - he is terribly difficult to get hold of. No email, answer phone is full and never answers his phone.

I wasn't given the opportunity to check the return, he filled it in online. But surely he is to blame. Although I can understand why the HMRC would come to me for mistakes.

The problem that makes the sum as high as it was, is tax relief from a company car which he did not submit, the reason being that I received the tax receipt in august which was too late to submit it on time.

Sjrs

chrismac1 wrote: »

There are various courses of action open to you if this person is QUALIFIED. You can threaten to report him to the Institute, which normally prompts accountants who are not doing the right thing to start doing it. You can claim under the PII but may need to provide some evidence that he has acted negligently. Note this:

1. Submitting the return based on estimates is perfectly acceptable provided this was stated on the notes within the return.
2. Where it is necessary to submit this sort of return to beat the deadline, and more accurate information later becomes available, the accountant in my view was negligent in leaving the inaccurate return on the system. It's easy enough to re-submit.

I've had to put in several estimated returns this year because I inherited 25 clients from an accountant who suddenly died. Some of the records clients had left with her could not be located, so there was no alternative but to put estimates forward. No problem, this is clearly stated on the returns. However, if these records were to suddenly turn up, in my view I would be ocntractually obliged to re-submit the accounts and rerturns based on this information.

I was handed he's details through a friend so my "not checking" if he is qualified is probably to blame, but I don't know if he is or not.

He stated to me on a letter that it was based on an estimate, but whether he did to the HMRC - I do not know. The taxman has re-submitted the values - hence the supposedly "owed" money.

What make it worse is that I still need to submit this years tax return and the HMRC system won't let me log in - I have complained to them on numerous occasions and been told they'll have to get back to me - which they haven't.