Self employed audited accounts question

DukeOfEarl

My wife is self employed, but only makes a very small amount for which she fills a self assessment form.

She has been asked, by the council, to provide audited accounts for this and last year

She doesn't have any as she thought self assessment was enough

PLease could someone point me in the right direction so that she knows what she has to do.

Thanks in advance

Premier_2

DukeOfEarl wrote: »

My wife is self employed, but only makes a very small amount for which she fills a self assessment form.

She has been asked, by the council, to provide audited accounts for this and last year

She doesn't have any as she thought self assessment was enough

PLease could someone point me in the right direction so that she knows what she has to do.

Thanks in advance

Why do the council want to see your wifes financial affairs at all?

If there is a valid reason, I would suggest telling the truth. i.e. that your wife doesn't have any audited accounts.

SteProud

Under what type of trading model does your wife operate? Does she have her own limited company or is she a sole trader for example?

heretolearn_2

What exactly are they asking for? You can have audited accounts or unaudited accounts.

Considering audit fees it's not reasonable to expect a small business to have an audit done.

Is it just part of a standard form or something she is filling out and she could supply unaudited accounts for?

However these are still not the same as her tax return. They are signed off financial statements (accounts) including balance sheet, statement of financial activity, etc, and she would usually need an accountant to do it for her.

If an accountant did her tax return then financial statements may also have been prepared at that stage, but if her income is very small then probably not, to keep the accounting costs down for her.

Pennywise

Local councils have a tendency of not understanding what "audited" actually means. I think it's very lazy way of asking for properly prepared accounts. Almost certainly they won't be expecting the expensive and unnecessary statutory audit.

As suggested above, you need to contact the council and tell them that you do your accounts yourself and all you have is a copy of your SA tax return. That should satisfy them unless you get the jobsworth from hell.

tyllwyd

Small businesses don't have to provide audited accounts to Companies House so she is unlikely to have prepared them - see here for more info on thresholds http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/layer?topicId=1073979850

But as other people have said, maybe they just mean accounts prepared by an accountant.

DukeOfEarl

Thanks guys

terra_ferma

I assume she is tendering for work with them?
If this is the case her best option is to contact the council (following EXACTLY the procedure in their tender documents), and ask them.
It colud be that documents were drawn with big contractors in mind, and they didn't think of smaller tenders involving sole traders.
If it's a really big contract then she may not have much chance of winning it, as the main contractor, but this is a different story.