Pension Contribution - Accountant recommends Personal Contributoin

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Advice in this thread not withstanding, if your only concern is re-mortgaging, there are lenders out there that will lend based on a combination of dividend + salary, a combination of net profit + salary and on daily rate, depending on your circumstances so if you have regular healthy profits and several years of accounts I wouldn't worry too much about getting another mortgage when the time comes. Speak to an IFA perhaps?

[ContrataxLtd]

@SueEllen > Ah you're probably correct, i hadn't thought about it like that.

Yeah i'm not totally happy with him tbh.

He's not clear in his explanations and it would seem he's not offering correct advice either! He generally dismissive to my questions saying "don't worry about it, thats what you pay us for, we'll sort it out when we do your accounts. Just take what you need and we'll sort out the best way of accounting for it after". which is not an approach i'm happy with.

As i use FreeAgent and do my own VAT and RTI i really only need a basic service EOY service (inc SA for me and the mrs) and i can't really justify moving to one of the specialist contract Accountants who want £1200+vat /year for what would equate to less than a days work annually. However that said, paying an accountant who is given wrong advice is pointless as well!

Any Accountants on here who could offer such a service feel free to get in touch!

Hi Fandango

Your accountant appears to be incorrect in the advice he's given you. Dividend income doesn't count towards your relevant earnings for pension purposes so although you could put the £20k in personally you wouldn't receive full tax relief on this with your salary only being around £8k. On the face of it you would be better making some personal contributions and the rest via the company. This also has the benefit of protecting some funds from IR35.

"don't worry about it, thats what you pay us for, we'll sort it out when we do your accounts. Just take what you need and we'll sort out the best way of accounting for it after"

This is also a worrying quote and something that doesn't sit well with you either. You need to ensure all funds withdrawn are accounted for correctly at the time of withdrawal or there could be adverse tax implications.

I've also dropped you a PM about the accountancy services.

Martin
Contratax Ltd

[SueEllen]

Yeah i'm not totally happy with him tbh.

He's not clear in his explanations and it would seem he's not offering correct advice either! He generally dismissive to my questions saying "don't worry about it, thats what you pay us for, we'll sort it out when we do your accounts. Just take what you need and we'll sort out the best way of accounting for it after". which is not an approach i'm happy with.

As i use FreeAgent and do my own VAT and RTI i really only need a basic service EOY service (inc SA for me and the mrs) and i can't really justify moving to one of the specialist contract Accountants who want £1200+vat /year for what would equate to less than a days work annually. However that said, paying an accountant who is given wrong advice is pointless as well!

If his explanations aren't clear and he refuses to say " I'm not allowed to advice you on these matters" then you need to find another accountant asap.

In regards to paying £1200 a year - there actually accountants recommended who are cheaper than this on the recommended accountant's lists which is amongst the stickies. Even if you do pay more it could work out cheaper in the long run.

Also be aware accountants can get fed up of a client asking them lots of questions. So some of them have realised referring clients to their own website full of information plus an IFA gets rid of the simple questions.

[Fandango]

Well I've done what any normal bloke does when he wants to break off a 7 year relationship. Dump him by email then ignore the repeated pestering phonecalls untill they get the message As a parting gift my Accountant decided he was only going to charge me for 15 mins of the 30mins of bad advice i'd received on our phonecall as a gesture of goodwill, that was a nice touch i thought.

Anyway thanks to the accountants who replied to my request and cheers to Martin@ContraTax who is going to handle my accounts from now on