Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: easycleaner on March 11, 2009, 10:48:03 pm
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I run two wfp vans, I run one and one of my guys runs the other. The tax man is charging my worker tax on the private use and me for mine. I told them we dont use them for private, we got to prove it and show them mile logs that match the fuel bill, what a real pain. Fat cats rip the tax man off for millions and he wants tax on £500!
Just so annoyed!! and fed up of form filling.
If you have blokes work for you or claim in full tax relief for your van keep milage sheets.
Mart.
Ps if you owe millions in tax dont worry! they wont bother you.
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Do you have an accountant?
You'll find that the tax man bothers you a lot less if you do!
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Fat cats rip the tax man off for millions and he wants tax on £500!
Of course! its more easy for him to go after you than it is for someone like tesco! or SKY etc what can we do at the end of the day?
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Do you have an accountant?
You'll find that the tax man bothers you a lot less if you do!
Well said, accountant cost a few quid ;) but they can solve
probs like that for you
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Just keep a daily log with things like start miles/end miles and when you fill up what the milage was and how many miles are on the trip thingy.
I keep loads of information about my daily work...just so I can answer those niggly questions the grim reaper may ask come judgment day...it only take a few minutes each evening to note it down.
Cheers
Dave.
but yes I do agree it is a little small potatoes is it not.
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Do you have an accountant?
You'll find that the tax man bothers you a lot less if you do!
I think you'll find that's wrong.
The criteria for a tax enquiry is as follows:
1. A sudden decline in your turnover from previous tax returns.
2. Information received from a third party indicating something could be 'dodgy'.
3. At random; their computer system selects a certain amount of accounts for random auditing.
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That’s true the Tax man will be less bother, if you have an accountant.
How? I can show you in 'black and white' the criteria for a tax inquiry; can you show me similar for your above statement?
Being an ex-accountant myself (not a tax one though), having an accountant wouldn't put an auditor from checking your accounts. Why should it? The tax auditor will just ask for information for them to check, and whether it's you or the accountant supplying it to him is neither here nor there.
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everyone has to prove they only use their vans for business and if you use it for anything else I wont say social domestic & pleasure just anything else the tax bill
you can expect is £3000 a year not £500. so be warned.
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I'm not on either side of the fence here gang, but i did see(i think it was panorama) about a year ago and a tax inspector(who didn't want her face to be seen for obvious reasons) did state that they normally don't bother with the larger companies who can afford expensive lawyers/solicitors/accountants as they put up a hell of a fight...............also(the interesting part) people with accountants for similar reasons. The people they enjoy ripping apart are the small fish/self employed/small businesses without accountants as they're easy pickings. These aint my thoughts Tosh. It's what i saw. Nonetheless,i don't doubt what you're saying. For once ;D
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This works without fail, phone him up and ask how much can i claim for my car that i use to go a quote work,
an accountant i know did that and the tax man left him alone after finding out he will loose more than he can save
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i dont understand... can you elaborate on that :)
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The comments are all valid. Yes I do have an accountant, but the tax man belives that if you deal in cash you dont tell the truth. We all have to pay tax but at times I think we are all easy targets, the masses that is. I will have to pay about £200 and I wont be able to put all my diesel receipts in. In these times its easy to get a few quid of millions that millions of a few.
Mart.
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How do they know your using the van for anything else? I might collect at the weekend, work, or price up jobs ???
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How do they know your using the van for anything else? I might collect at the weekend, work, or price up jobs ???
If you have another vehicle that helps - as in you use your family car for all private mileage and the van purely for work.
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There are two parts to filing your accounts.
Not only must you tell the truth, but you must look like you are telling the truth as well, and that is where an accountant comes into his own.
He knows what you can and cannot claim for. What the revenue view with suspicion and what they are OK with.
Worth the money I would say...
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good posts tosh.
The cast iron defense has nothing to do with accountants, it's that you have another vehicle, a car.
That's an absolute defence.
Of course if you don't have another vehicle then a proportion may be for private use.
Assuming you are at the early stages of an enquiry this is probably a ploy to give you something to think about and will probably be dropped once they get their teeth into your cash situation.
The best strategy is a slow retreat, you have to let them win, but be carefull because they go back to when you started your current set up or seven years, so £500 soon becomes £3000. Be cooperative, just this side of groveling, although they don't object tp groveling.This will avoid penalties.
If you really are up the creek i can give you a couple of off forum survival tipps.
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There are two parts to filing your accounts.
Not only must you tell the truth, but you must look like you are telling the truth as well, and that is where an accountant comes into his own.
He knows what you can and cannot claim for. What the revenue view with suspicion and what they are OK with.
Worth the money I would say...
Too true, mine told me never to claim 100% usage for my van for that very reason, 95% is fine :D
just take 5% off all my vehicle expenses. ;)
Tony
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There are two parts to filing your accounts.
Not only must you tell the truth, but you must look like you are telling the truth as well, and that is where an accountant comes into his own.
He knows what you can and cannot claim for. What the revenue view with suspicion and what they are OK with.
Worth the money I would say...
Too true, mine told me never to claim 100% usage for my van for that very reason, 95% is fine :D
just take 5% off all my vehicle expenses. ;)
Tony
+1 on the 95% claim,
Rob.
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A lot of the tax system is done on scales ie if you use a van for private use its worth £500 in benefit, so tax is payable on £500, you have to prove that you dont use it for private use, ie its locked up in a yard. But if you work from home and your men do its going to be a hard job to prove it and it makes you an easy target and belive me this is going to happen to more people.
What do you claim for? van, fuel, phone office from home all ligit, but can you prove it?
Mart.
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There are two parts to filing your accounts.
Not only must you tell the truth, but you must look like you are telling the truth as well, and that is where an accountant comes into his own.
He knows what you can and cannot claim for. What the revenue view with suspicion and what they are OK with.
Worth the money I would say...
Too true, mine told me never to claim 100% usage for my van for that very reason, 95% is fine :D
just take 5% off all my vehicle expenses. ;)
Tony
Seems reasonable. My van is my only vehicle and I have 85% as business use. When I had a car as well it was 100% PLUS a little for the car as I used it for quoting certain jobs where turning up in a work van may not have given a good impression.
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I said before the Tax man is not to be trusted; they make mistakes and can throw accusation at you then demand money from you.
You are more vulnerable if you are on your own; if you owe money to the tax man pay, if you don’t and he demands you pay, don’t pay.
The very least you can do is have an accountant and be a member of the FSB or get similar support in the event something like this should happen to you.
Just a bit of additional information, which may or may not be relevant:
Ian_Giles (moderator here) once had a tax investigation because HE HAD an accountant.
The accountant was found to be 'dodgy' by the tax investigators, so all of his clients; including Ian; were tax investigated.
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When I had a car as well it was 100% PLUS a little for the car as I used it for quoting certain jobs where turning up in a work van may not have given a good impression.
But surely you would have lost out because you would then have had to insure your car for business use not just social, domestic and pleasure. Or doesn't it work like that :)
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When I had a car as well it was 100% PLUS a little for the car as I used it for quoting certain jobs where turning up in a work van may not have given a good impression.
But surely you would have lost out because you would then have had to insure your car for business use not just social, domestic and pleasure. Or doesn't it work like that :)
If you insure with Tesco you get business use included. I know cuz my daughter is a mobile hairdresser and not only was Tesco good value it included business use too.
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I said before the Tax man is not to be trusted; they make mistakes and can throw accusation at you then demand money from you.
You are more vulnerable if you are on your own; if you owe money to the tax man pay, if you don’t and he demands you pay, don’t pay.
The very least you can do is have an accountant and be a member of the FSB or get similar support in the event something like this should happen to you.
Just a bit of additional information, which may or may not be relevant:
Ian_Giles (moderator here) once had a tax investigation because HE HAD an accountant.
The accountant was found to be 'dodgy' by the tax investigators, so all of his clients; including Ian; were tax investigated.
What was the outcome?
I can't remember; Ian told me after we had two-or-three pints of lager! :-[
But my point was, Ian had done nothing wrong; I think his accountant was fiddling his customer's books for the tax man; yet saying that his customers had £X amount to pay; and pocketing the difference.
I think there's also two types of accountants; the chartered ones and the other ones. With a chartered accountant; I think that they deal with tax enquiries and they're liable for any anomolies; but with the routine sort, they'd be no different than if you sent your 'books' to me; and I did them for you.
I don't believe an accountant is any sort of 'umbrella' if you get selected for a tax enquiry.
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When I had a car as well it was 100% PLUS a little for the car as I used it for quoting certain jobs where turning up in a work van may not have given a good impression.
But surely you would have lost out because you would then have had to insure your car for business use not just social, domestic and pleasure. Or doesn't it work like that :)
Never thought about that really. Mind you, I suppose it would be difficult to get nicked for no insurance if I'm going to visit someone to socialise and just happen to supply a quotation while I'm there :)
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The point is that I feel I have a decent accountant, he puts in all the 'claims and allowences' but the taxman just seems to pick on people at random and give them a bill and thats that! Prove it or pay it! I have no reason to belive that it is or will happen very soon to someone else on this forum.
Mart.
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The point is that I feel I have a decent accountant, he puts in all the 'claims and allowences' but the taxman just seems to pick on people at random and give them a bill and thats that! Prove it or pay it! I have no reason to belive that it is or will happen very soon to someone else on this forum.
Mart.
You can prove your annual mileage by producing MOTs or in the case of newer vehicles, a servicing record. You can also show the areas where you clean by keeping a daily record of individual transactions. Add on collecting journeys (if you do that) and special trips to quote for new work plus any visits to suppliers. Difficult to calculate retrospectively but you ought to have sufficient paperwork to be able to show that you are generally being truthful even if some of the finer details are missing.
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get stung one way get pay back x 10 another
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get stung one way get pay back x 10 another
I must confess that after running my business life honestly and fairly that if I was hit with a bill that I knew was unfair (say I couldn't "prove" the expenses to the taxman's satisfaction) then I would be sorely tempted to make up the lost dosh somehow!
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Dont know if this is of any use.
I used to operate nine vehicles from 1994 to 2004 whilst owning a security company.
I was visited by tax man and told him that all the vehicles were "pool" vehicles and that employees came to office to collect vehicles ;), no employee had their own vehicle ;), just a case of take what was there.
He allowed me all expenses for vehicles. He did ask how I got to work, at that time I walked, only lived 5 mins from office.
He wouldn't allow me all of my expenses for McDonalds though ;D
Not sure if this is still the case.