finding a roofer not registered for VAT

donglefan

Am I right in thinking that it is legitimate to hire a firm that is not registered for VAT which allows a saving of 20% vat on an expensive roofing job?
If this is correct, how to go about finding a reputable roofer who is not registered?

Dazed_and_C0nfused

donglefan said:

Am I right in thinking that it is legitimate to hire a firm that is not registered for VAT which allows a saving of 20% vat on an expensive roofing job?
If this is correct, how to go about finding a reputable roofer who is not registered?

Might be tricky as they would not get through too many expensive jobs each year before becoming liable to VAT 

Might be needle in a haystack.

eskbanker

donglefan said:

Am I right in thinking that it is legitimate to hire a firm that is not registered for VAT which allows a saving of 20% vat on an expensive roofing job?
If this is correct, how to go about finding a reputable roofer who is not registered?

It's legitimate if the company is operating legally, but whether it's sensible is another story....

Hoenir

Reputable traders have little option but to register for VAT. If their turnover reaches the threshold for doing so. Which for roofing businessess is more than likely the case given the materials involved alone. 

flaneurs_lobster

Legitimate, but would you want a company that's not established enough to be turning over £85K/yr anywhere near your roof?

DullGreyGuy

donglefan said:

Am I right in thinking that it is legitimate to hire a firm that is not registered for VAT which allows a saving of 20% vat on an expensive roofing job?
If this is correct, how to go about finding a reputable roofer who is not registered?

In principle the saving would be less than 20% because they cannot recover the VAT on their running costs (eg the lease charges on their vehicle) and so need to charge a higher net labour rate to cover these and dont have the economies of scale.

The problem is that roofing jobs are expensive and so it raises the question of why they aren't getting enough work to mean they need to register for VAT

Phoenix72

VAT threshold £90,000 - average job several thousand. Won't take many jobs to hit the threshold. 

Tucosalamanca

You wouldn't save 20%. You would only save the vat element of labour costs and mark up.

VAT on the materials will be paid regardless. (A non-registered trader can't claim back vat and will factor those costs into your quotation).

The only way a roofer could remain under the threshold would be to work as a labour only contractor (client buying all materials, arranging scaffolding, waste disposal etc).
This does create other issues, guarantees being the most obvious. The roofer would have no responsibility for materials and that would be an easy 'get out' for them if things went wrong.

As an aside, any roofer worth hiring should be turning over 90k every few months, if not weeks....