VAT and Tax Returns

This is for all of you that are planning to take advantage of the flexibilities offered by HRMC last year with tax and VAT payments, contact them now! There have been a few rumours that the generous nature adopted last year allowing you to pay particularly tax returns in instalments (normally over 6 months) will not be so forthcoming and the hoops that you will have to go through will be testing to say the least.

Why? Take your pick, the government coffers have been running on empty for a while and now they are trying recoup the money spent (or some of it at least). Also, if you as a business contacted the bank and asked them for some extra time to pay your bills, alarm bells would start ringing and depending on your trading history they might not be very willing to assist you and possibly remove existing credit facilities making it even harder. So why would this be different for HRMC, it is very likely that they lost large amounts of revenue last year by allowing businesses to pay instalments and cannot afford to make the same mistake again. Unfortunately at the minute as soon as you require any type of financial assistance you are leaving yourself open to be considered a bad debt

Another point would be that by refusing any type of payment structure they force certainly smaller independent businesses to look elsewhere for funding i.e. family and friends ensuring that government revenues do not fall even further!

So don't delay, if you want to try and arrange any type of payment plan contact them now because once this hits the media you will stand very little chance of agreeing a solution that will have any benefit to you and your business.

Happy New Year!