Lots Of Questions From VAT man

[oraclesmith]

That will be £200 apiece for business consultancy. We'll send you the appropriate VAT invoices.


Keeerching !

[CaribbeanPirate]

Don't bother with all that.

Pick any VAT number that you find laying around and shove that on your invoice.

Add VAT to the invoice

Get paid and trouser the lot.

It'll be ages before anyone will twig what is going on. By that time you should have legged it abroad.

[Asterix]

Good Advice

Pirate, is this how you managed to retire to the Caribbean ?
BTW, a lot of our Aussie/Kiwi 'cousins' are experts in that (fake VAT nos)

In reply to the original question, HMRC WILL want to see you trading for a while before they issue you with a VAT reg. no. Can't see why you need it straight away, unless it's a scam. You can still backdate VAT credits as there iks an 'adjustment' clause whereby you can take into account previous invoices that have been 'mislaid' and not included in the last couple of VAT qtrs

[Ivor1]

It was only because my agency were insisting on VAT certifcate before issuing contract, the agency have now backed down now.

[Troll]

I recon it will take 8 months to hit the threashold, if I'm not regsitered for VAT during the time, once I hit the threashold will I have to back date it to cover the last eight month I didnt charge it ?

No No & Thrice NO - I did this and ended up being inspected - issues - if you issue back dated VAT invoice no guarantee of payment but you will be liable.
Also:
VAT man will say you should have added 'VAT registration applied for' onto your invoices and charged from the outset.
He will then show amount of money not paid to HM in previous quarters (and take it as lost revenue for HMG) add daily interest to outstanding amount and just for good measure compound the interest - doesn't sound fair - well it happened to me!

[oraclesmith]

No No & Thrice NO - I did this and ended up being inspected - issues - if you issue back dated VAT invoice no guarantee of payment but you will be liable.

That was silly. Whatever possessed you to do that ? Surely there's no financial benefit in doing it. You can still reclaim input VAT when you register and the HMRC won't require you to collect VAT until you register or reach the threshold whichever comes first.

[CaribbeanPirate]

Pirate, is this how you managed to retire to the Caribbean ?

Maybe.

BTW, a lot of our Aussie/Kiwi 'cousins' are experts in that (fake VAT nos)

Actually, this is what I was thinking of.

[Joe Black]

Pirate, is this how you managed to retire to the Caribbean ?
BTW, a lot of our Aussie/Kiwi 'cousins' are experts in that (fake VAT nos)

Not exactly hard since the UK has a very simple way of generating the number and includes only a very simple checksum. The main idea being that any company trading with someone new should verify the other details, company name/address etc, by calling a free-phone number they have.

Various other EU countries though have a very hush, hush policy on their VAT numbers because the number itself is considered almost like a hash to show that it's genuine.

[oraclesmith]

I don't see the point of hiding the algorithm. If someone wanted to defraud the VAT they could easily startup a small limited company, like our Ivor1 here and buy a few things, thus getting a genuine number. Or you could appropriate a genuine one from a small company. They're everywhere - invoices, receipts, websites, stationery. The big VAT frauds are on missing trader sequences, which are done through genuine companies.

[Joe Black]

I guess the concern is that with things like carousel/intra-eu fraud, being able to readily put down a few hundred valid numbers from other countries, on your EU sales form for example, makes it more difficult for them to flag up a problem.