Cannot submit sole trader partnership to HMRC

Jacqui177London

Hello - 

I’m trying to file a tax return for an existing partnership. I have the UTR. 

Previously our tax was managed by an accountant. We are a sole trader partnership and have to do 3 returns, one for me , my partner and the partnership. He told me we don’t need anything from him to take over our self assessment. 

I’ve been told by HMRC that I don’t need to register the partnership from scratch.  I have opened a new HRMC online business self assessment account via Government Gateway.  When going to the ’Set up your business tax account’ procedure I get the error message: this information does not exist for self assessment online for partnerships, or it has already been used to request access to this tax or scheme. 

I have installed third party (ABC) software and completed the tax return. I am unable to submit -  I get the message: the supplied user credentials failed validation for the requested service 

I have contacted everyone i can think of the third part software in case their was a fault/ HMRC they don't seem to understand the problem. We have done our returns we just want to submit them. Has anyone had a similar issue

Thank you 

[Deleted User]

You are either a sole trader or in a partnership. Solely for the purposes of self-assessment forms, neither of you are self-employed but partners. The partnership shorts (or full) are completed, not the self-employed forms. I repeat - do not complete the self-employed pages.

you are correct in saying that you need specialist software to submit partnership returns. I don’t understand why you have attempted to set up a new business account when the business already exists. Can you clarify?

tacpot12

The error message "this information does not exist for self assessment online for partnerships, or it has already been used to request access to this tax or scheme." seem very specific and HMRC should be able to explain what would cause this error message. I would call them back, and ask for a manager to take responsibility for find out what is going wrong and supporting you to get set-up. A complaint to HMRC should be made if no manager will take responsibility for this issue.

I think you are doing the right thing in setting up a new Government Gateway account for the Partnership, but again HMRC should be able to tell if the accountant should have provided you with the login details for the Government Gateway account that they used to submit partnership returns for your partnership.  It might be worth asking the accountant if they are prepared to do this, as it seems the best way to work around the problem.

It would be  good to hear what the solution turns out to be, as sooner or later someone else is going to have these problems. I've always done our Partnership returns on paper. 

oldbikebloke

this is a guess...,.
your accountant could have been using his own "agency" credentials to submit your partnership returns, so in that sense the credentials you used may indeed already be associated with "something else" in HMRC, his accountancy practice, so are being rejected for that reason as you are now trying to associate them with the "new" online account solely related to your partnership?

Jeremy535897

Any agent is required to use their agent's login credentials, following authorisation of the agent by the client, to submit tax returns. Agents have been instructed not to use the client's own gateway account, as it can trigger fraud alerts (this was a particularly strong message for SEISS). The accountant may or may not have deleted OP as a client, but I don't think that should matter. Nevertheless, it would be worth another conversation with the accountant.

The accountant cannot file a client prepared return using his agent authorisation if he is no longer acting for the client.

mags21

This may or may not be relevant - Do you already have self-assessment added on your personal tax account? 

[Deleted User]

mags21 said:

This may or may not be relevant - Do you already have self-assessment added on your personal tax account? 

Probably not - the issue is with the partnership return filing. The information from the profit allocation on that is transferred to the partner section of each individual return. 

Jacqui177London

tacpot12 said:

The error message "this information does not exist for self assessment online for partnerships, or it has already been used to request access to this tax or scheme." seem very specific and HMRC should be able to explain what would cause this error message. I would call them back, and ask for a manager to take responsibility for find out what is going wrong and supporting you to get set-up. A complaint to HMRC should be made if no manager will take responsibility for this issue.

I think you are doing the right thing in setting up a new Government Gateway account for the Partnership, but again HMRC should be able to tell if the accountant should have provided you with the login details for the Government Gateway account that they used to submit partnership returns for your partnership.  It might be worth asking the accountant if they are prepared to do this, as it seems the best way to work around the problem.

It would be  good to hear what the solution turns out to be, as sooner or later someone else is going to have these problems. I've always done our Partnership returns on paper. 

I'm not having much luck speaking to anyone at HMRC at the moment, certainly not anyone who understands what I'm talking about. I will get back to the accountant tomorrow, though he has said he used his own 'agents references' so it won't be a question of using his login in some way.

sheramber

Did you complete the registration for a partnership?

Jacqui177London

[Deleted User] said:

You are either a sole trader or in a partnership. Solely for the purposes of self-assessment forms, neither of you are self-employed but partners. The partnership shorts (or full) are completed, not the self-employed forms. I repeat - do not complete the self-employed pages.

you are correct in saying that you need specialist software to submit partnership returns. I don’t understand why you have attempted to set up a new business account when the business already exists. Can you clarify?

Thanks you are right - we are just a partnership ( been trying to sort it out for last 3 days so slightly losing the plot!) It was one of the many suggestions given to us to set up a new business account but we realise this is wrong. 

Jacqui177London

Jeremy535897 said:

Any agent is required to use their agent's login credentials, following authorisation of the agent by the client, to submit tax returns. Agents have been instructed not to use the client's own gateway account, as it can trigger fraud alerts (this was a particularly strong message for SEISS). The accountant may or may not have deleted OP as a client, but I don't think that should matter. Nevertheless, it would be worth another conversation with the accountant.

The accountant cannot file a client prepared return using his agent authorisation if he is no longer acting for the client.

thank you - we are going back to our old accountant to query. We are a small business and felt that our old accountant wasn't that interested in us - once we get it our accounts sorted and our business back to speed we will look for a slightly different accountant