Im not having a go...

straightandnarrow_2

I do hope you get this sorted and that you can forget about it and get on with your life and business - good luck I'm off to ebay for a bit!!

backontheup

Lifeisbutadream wrote:

Actually I feel a lot less hurt when I am doing something about it.

If I had walked away, THEN it would have eaten up at me.

Good Lord, you HAVE to let this go. It sounds like you have got obsessed by the whole thing. Especially if you have paid a private detective to snoop on him.

Did the work COST you £1400? Or is that just how much his bill was? How much did the work COST you? £800?

So far you have spent almost that again chasing a 'principle'? That is money that you are directly taking out of your children's mouths to chase a 'principle'. If you are in deficit by £400 a month, then that £1600 would have seen you clear for a few months.

Principles are all very worthy, but this is costing you money you cannot afford, and time that you could spend with your familly. Get some perspective.

Lifeisbutadream

backontheup wrote:

Good Lord, you HAVE to let this go. It sounds like you have got obsessed by the whole thing. Especially if you have paid a private detective to snoop on him.

Did the work COST you £1400? Or is that just how much his bill was? How much did the work COST you? £800?

So far you have spent almost that again chasing a 'principle'? That is money that you are directly taking out of your children's mouths to chase a 'principle'. If you are in deficit by £400 a month, then that £1600 would have seen you clear for a few months.

Principles are all very worthy, but this is costing you money you cannot afford, and time that you could spend with your familly. Get some perspective.

OK thanks for the advice.

The work COST me more than £1400 - I paid 2 contractors plus my husband worked 3 days for free when he could have done other PAID work.

It is not costing me any more money now thank you.

Lifeisbutadream

And the private detective was a friend - I still paid him, not to 'snoop' but to find out what was going on and to ask him to pay.

And actually it was the best thing I did - I found out what I was up against.

It was £20 ... !

Sooty0404

If you are in business then losing money through non paying customers or through bankruptcies is an 'occupational hazard'.

All businesses operate in the expectation that the profits will outweigh the losses.

Of course you feel aggreived, you have every right to, but you can reclaim the VAT on bad debt (if applicable) and offset the rest against tax so in theory it should not cost you anything.

Additionally, as you have discovered, there are numerous ways to recover your money from this individual.

Concentrate on future money making work. This bad debt is now a paperwork exercise which resolve itself in due course.

Nothing is certain in business and (I hope not) one day you may find yourself in a similar position to many of us here. How much sleep will you lose in respect of your creditors?

When you have worked those 70 hours a week to create a reasonable standard of living and you suddenly find yourself in dire straits your first concern will be to protecting and providing for your family and your creditors take a very poor second place. That's life.

Until you have experienced this position like I and many of my co-posters have, you will never really understand.

I sincerely hope you never have to.

Lifeisbutadream

Thank you so much to all of you for answering my original query, which was whether anyone who has gone bankrupt or stopped paying creditors, ever think about the creditors that they did not pay. I feel that this question has been answered now.

Thank you also for the ones who have informed me that I will probably go bankrupt myself.

I look forward to many more years of working every hour to pay off other peoples debts.

:rolleyes:

Jane_East_Yorks

Lifeisbutadream wrote:

Thank you so much to all of you for answering my original query, which was did someone whether anyone who has gone bankrupt or stopped paying creditors, ever think about the creditors that they did not pay. I feel that this question has been answered now.

Thank you also for the ones who have informed me that I will probably go bankrupt myself.

I look forward to many more years of working to pay off other peoples debts.

:rolleyes:

I've been following this thread and got the impression that you were looking for an outlet to vent your frustrations; hope it worked for you.

If you really want some good advice print off Sooty's post above, it's superb. I'm an ex business woman that's been where you are now and you have got an awful lot to learn, I sincerely hope it won't be as painful for you as it has been for me.

Jane x

MrsBees

Sooty0404 wrote:

If you are in business then losing money through non paying customers or through bankruptcies is an 'occupational hazard'.

All businesses operate in the expectation that the profits will outweigh the losses.

Of course you feel aggreived, you have every right to, but you can reclaim the VAT on bad debt (if applicable) and offset the rest against tax so in theory it should not cost you anything.

I have just come across this thread - and this is my first post after reading them for some time now.

I am speaking from an outsiders point of view - I neither have money owed to me or owe too much to be able to pay back, but I just had to beg to differ on this one!

You would only be able to reclaim the VAT if you had paid it in the first place, so you have gained nothing there! and to offset it against tax, just means that you dont pay tax on it - but if you didnt get it, you wouldnt be paying tax on it anyway!!

Of course it has cost something - it has cost what she is owed!

Anyway, more to the point - I think a fair question was asked at the beginning of this thread and it obviously has upset a lot of people (people who maybe realised that there are faces at the end of the debt owed), but I hardly think that this woman deserves being patronised and told that if she isnt careful, she too will go bankrupt and that she should get a life!

As long as the laws in this land are as they are, there will be a hell of a lot more like her - putting the boot on the other foot - I hope that none of you, when you get back on your feet - start up a business only to have it knocked back by people like this man.

Su

Richard_S

MrsBees wrote:

I have just come across this thread - and this is my first post after reading them for some time now.

I am speaking from an outsiders point of view - I neither have money owed to me or owe too much to be able to pay back, but I just had to beg to differ on this one!

You would only be able to reclaim the VAT if you had paid it in the first place, so you have gained nothing there! and to offset it against tax, just means that you dont pay tax on it - but if you didnt get it, you wouldnt be paying tax on it anyway!!

Of course it has cost something - it has cost what she is owed!

Anyway, more to the point - I think a fair question was asked at the beginning of this thread and it obviously has upset a lot of people (people who maybe realised that there are faces at the end of the debt owed), but I hardly think that this woman deserves being patronised and told that if she isnt careful, she too will go bankrupt and that she should get a life!

As long as the laws in this land are as they are, there will be a hell of a lot more like her - putting the boot on the other foot - I hope that none of you, when you get back on your feet - start up a business only to have it knocked back by people like this man.

Su

Hi Su,

Sorry to contradict you but Sooty is correct, if VAT is charged on a sale and the debt goes bad the VAT element of the sale is offset against a future VAT liability. Furthermore, if a traders profit is £18k for the year and a bad debt is offset against taxable profits then it reduces the tax payable for the year.

Any business that doesn't budget something for bad and doubtful debts is not living in the real world. The money and time that the OP put into persuing legal action would have been far better employed by increasing the businesses sales and income.

I think the only reason that her bky was mentioned was because she admitted to having a £400 monthly shortfall, not something that can go on indefinitely. Seems bizarre to me that she should choose this forum given that the number of people who are bankrupt or are facing bky are business people.

Richard

MrsBees

Sorry to contradict you back, but exactly as I said in above post, you would only get back the VAT that you had already paid and you would only have to pay tax on something that you already had of course it wont cost you any tax, but that is absolutely obvious - it doesnt make it ok!

You dont always have the budget in place for losses such as this one - and what if everyone did that???

Sorry, but I think you are wrong - the laws of this country are wrong

Large companies may be able to budget for losses - but they do that by charging other people more - banks for instance - if everyone paid their loans back as agreed, instead of £1 a month as some people seem to be - (or even not at all) then the people who have full intentions of paying back what they owe, would get a better deal.