cost of accountant

csgohan4

if its simple, fill it in yourself, save yourself £250

Worried_of_wakefield

Unsure why this innocent post has turned into a re-gaurd defence of the accountant, obviously one or two accountants responding!! £250 is probably cheap for a couple of hours work for a qualified professional, but it a sizeable cost for my wife who earns less than £10k. I had it in my head that if you were never ever going to pay tax you could opt out. Clearly I'm wrong, having completed self assessment forms since their inception, pretty sure I can manage hers.

ATB for 2019 everyone.........to the pub, yeeha

tebthereb

I would be tempted to write politely to HMRC explaining the position and asking them to suspend issuing further returns the situation; i.e. no tax at stake. Point out you are aware of the requirement to notify should a tax liability arise, but that you do not think you will otherwise be required to file a return due to s7(7) TMA 1970. They might not agree, but worth a try perhaps.

nick74

It is perhaps worth considering that for someone with no other income, completing a tax return and declaring a small amount of self employment income provides a way of voluntarily paying class 2 National Insurance contributions. At £2.95 per week it is a relatively cheap way of building up entitlement to a state pension for someone who might otherwise not have enough years NI contributions.

csgohan4

I used to pay 99 pounds including VAt for a tax return for less than 100k salary. OP if you want an accountant, shop around perhaps

Cook_County

csgohan4 wrote: »

I used to pay 99 pounds including VAt for a tax return for less than 100k salary. OP if you want an accountant, shop around perhaps

£99 including VAT smacks of an accountant who is not qualified.

badmemory

I do the bookkeeping for a friend & the first thing to check is if you can get the same figures as the accountant filed. This is what I did before I started filing self assessment for my friend. If you can't, can you find out why not? As long as there is no change to the way the business operates then there should be no problem with DIY. My friend has a turnover of over £100k & is VATable & 2 years on the run I got the exact same figures (after figuring out what must have been wrong in the first year).


So when you have tried to do it, do you agree? If not, can you figure out why you don't agree? Most of it is logic not maths. If you don't try you'll never know.

00ec25

Cook_County wrote: »

£99 including VAT smacks of an accountant who is not qualified.

certainly smacks of something "odd"

VAT registered so net cost £82.50, so for something that is going to take at least 2 hours work to complete. That's around no more than £41.25 per hour which, on a 37 hour week, would give approx £80,400 gross income, so not even at VAT reg threshold.

sheramber

Many years ago , pre SA, HMRC did advise people who had low income every year that they did not need to submit a return/accounts until asked to do so or their circumstances changed.

The record was noted with a future year date when a return would be issued to update the information.

Pennywise

badmemory wrote: »

As long as there is no change to the way the business operates then there should be no problem with DIY.

And as long as there have been no changes in the tax rules!

Quite a lot of landlords are getting themselves caught out at the moment as there've been a lot of changes which they havn't noticed. Not just the mortgage interest rules, but also changes to the old 10% wear and tear allowance and capital allowances/replacement basis for equipment, fixtures & fittings.

Also, a lot of people who havn't realised the relatively new cash basis - I've seen quite a few people who've continued to use the accruals basis and apportioned cost home/vehicle basis when they'd be better off using the cash basis and HMRC scale rates instead - these are people who've been copying previous year returns for years and recent changes have completely passed them by!