Business Bankruptcy Advice

  • Thread starter Deleted member 92943
  • Start date
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Deleted member 92943

Guest
Evening,

Not a post i wanted to make but i really don't know what to do or where to turn.

Back in 2015, my husband and I started a Limited Company where we wanted to be TV installers. We worked 3rd party for John Lewis and Currys installing TVs in people's homes. We were really popular and was constantly called to take on specific jobs because our high quality. A year in it became apparent that we were doing hundreds and hundreds of instals but they just weren't paying after the stores took their cut. I got myself a normal 9-5 job which I'm happy with.

My husband (bless him) didn't want to loose the dream and battled on to make it work, but it just hasn't happened. Our accountants have totally let us down. We've paid them large sums of money to do all of our accounts, but it's become apparent they've missed quarterly fillings with HMRC.

Long story short, they reckon we owe near £9K to HMRC which we refute but if we do owe it, we can't afford it. A lot of customers stopped paying us too and our kindness has also led to our downfall.

While i know i'll probably get judged but does anyone have any advice or tips for me. What we want to do is liquidate the company which in turn would wipe out any existing debts owed. We have Zero assets and don't have any staff which we are responsible for.
 
Seek professional help.

If you think you're accounts are right then you should be able to get that verified by a third party accountant.

Whilst debts should remain with the company, again you would need to check as in some cases the directors could be liable. You don't want to find yourself in that scenario.

Getting advice from the forums is tricky without anybody keeping your full story and details. You might get opinions but I wouldn't want to rely on those in your circumstances.

Sorry if this isn't what you want to hear. :(
 
I am guessing the HMRC quarterly fillings are for Customs and Excise (the VAT man)? If so you really need to focus on them as they have a lot of legal powers. What I am not sure who has calculated the outstanding debt, is it HMRC or your accountants?
Have you tried calling your customers who owe you money? Some of them might just settle their bills; the more you get back what you are rightly owed the easier to manage the debt will become.
 
HMRC give estimates but it’s the accountants who work out what’s owed and are meant to be filling the quarterly returns, but it’s obvious they don’t even have a clue.

I’m just not sure where to go to get professional help or advice
 
Small claims court
Legal advice
Ring HMRC

Be honest, don't stress it, as a Ltd Co your house won't be liable, its 9k not 90k, agree a payment structure with the Govt & put it down to experience.
 
Small claims court
Legal advice
Ring HMRC

Be honest, don't stress it, as a Ltd Co your house won't be liable, its 9k not 90k, agree a payment structure with the Govt & put it down to experience.

You do make it sound cas lol I can't sleep at night I'm worrying so much.
 
Why did customers stop paying you?

We felt we got lucky with a couple of big jobs with wealthy people and it became apparent they don't like spending money. We would of probably done more work than what we quoted for to please. We would go above and beyond and they kept taking and taking more. For the most part it was probably it was us ending up more out of pocket than we should of on jobs. We did have one guy who just refused to pay for extra materials he wanted which wasn't part of his original install.
 
If there is just your husband as an employee of the business and assuming you are VAT registered then there should not be that much to your accounts. An accountant should not charge that much but you idea of large sums of money might be different to what others are.

What is the actual 9k supposedly owed for VAT, corporation tax, payroll related tax etc.
 
If you owe HMRC that much I hate to think what you are owed in unpaid bills.

consider employing a debt recovery firm and agree a percentage for debts recovered. stop being so nice and collect the debts, no matter how big they are, if you have done the work get paid for it.
 
If there is just your husband as an employee of the business and assuming you are VAT registered then there should not be that much to your accounts. An accountant should not charge that much but you idea of large sums of money might be different to what others are.

What is the actual 9k supposedly owed for VAT, corporation tax, payroll related tax etc.

It's all HMRC. We are told £6K in VAT and £3K tax in dividends which we took from the business. What's annoying is that everything we ask the accountants, they give a different answer.

We owed nothing to anyone else, we always paid our suppliers etc and felt we really were doing everything by the books
 
Is all that VAT you owe on invoices you actually collected?
 
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As you have been trading since 2015 you must have a least one years full trading so you should have something comparable to look at.

Is the £3k tax in corporation tax before you paid the dividends on your own\husbands personal tax bill? If the latter you are still liable but it shouldn't be required quarterly.

How are you being paid by the likes of JL etc. as you would need to make sure as imightbewrong that the VAT is been collected and treated correctly.

The question in the other post is are you owed money by your debtors not do you owe other people money.

Unfortunately some people don't pay their bills and you would to go to court (small claims depending on the size of bill) for recovery of those. That depends on the amounts involved but just because the live in a big house etc doesn't actually mean they have any spare cash, you would hope but there are some living on borrowed time.....

Do you use an accounting\bookkeeping system or just rely on the accountants?
 

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