Accountancy fees

sarahtom

I’d appreciate some advice. I have a small business, and following a recommendation found a financial services company to do my tax return. I was quoted £850 plus VAT. This represents about a tenth of my income but I thought it was standard. I signed a contract. Since then I’ve become aware that I can get the exact same for circa £300. I therefore decided to move accountants. They haven’t done any tax return yet. Perhaps naively I thought this was straightforward since all the first one had done was get their admin to set me up on their system, and they did once answer a short email query. However, if I leave them they are threatening to charge me £600 for this work. They are refusing to give me a breakdown of their fees eg in terms of time. Is there anything I can do? If I stay with them I feel like the trust has broken down and I’ll be nervous about additional costs, they seem an incredibly expensive service. 

[Deleted User]

Presuming that you operate as a sole trader, that would seem expensive (especially if this is your only income and you wouldn’t benefit from tax relief on those fees)

You are entitled to a breakdown of the fees. I would continue to insist upon this. 

DullGreyGuy

sarahtom said:
I was quoted £850 plus VAT. This represents about a tenth of my income but I thought it was standard. I signed a contract. Since then I’ve become aware that I can get the exact same for circa £300.

Without you saying what services they are providing its difficult to say which is the "right" price to be paying... it could be one is advisory and the other is non-advisory in which case neither seem particularly bad prices and just a question on if the advice is worth the extra. But at the same time if you are cash accounting, sole trader, straightforward business, no employees or VAT then maybe there is the question of if any accountant is necessary.

What does your contract say about exit fees? Were you submitting quarterly info to them? Have you paid them anything to date?

sarahtom

The fee was just for a tax return. They were happy to provide small amounts of ad hoc advice without extra charge, but when I said I wanted to leave they decided to charge me a huge whack for one small query (and set up on the system ). I haven’t submitted any data at all nor paid them anything to date. Will check re: exit fees . I get the impression they are a large financial institution who usually deal with big companies, not sole traders like me earning £20,000 a year! 

MDMD

They (and you) need to comply with the terms of the contract. What does it say about fees?