Costs for closing the company (VL)

[Guest]

Hi,

I am in the process of closing my company and my account has quoted me £3,500 + VAT for the whole process and I have a balance of approximately £40K in my company.

I do pay my accountant his monthly fees and he hasn't raised his fees in the last so many years (I pay £90 per month).

My accountant uses an external liquidation company and probably gets a commision out of it.

I have been with my accountant for over 10 years and in 2013 when I had closed the previous company I paid around £4K + VAT to close it (got my VAT back).

At that time I went ahead with it because I was going on holiday outside the country for more than 4 weeks and didn't bother to shop around.

I checked with MVL Online and they have quoted approximately £1500 + VAT but they have a long list of requirements that need to be satisfied before they can proceed with the liquidation.

Does the £3,500 look reasonable? As I won't have to do any running around and my accountant will deal directly with the liquidation company and also the fact that he has not raised his monthly fees in the last so many years.

[cojak]

Hi,

I am in the process of closing my company and my account has quoted me £3,500 + VAT for the whole process and I have a balance of approximately £40K in my company.

I do pay my accountant his monthly fees and he hasn't raised his fees in the last so many years (I pay £90 per month).

My accountant uses an external liquidation company and probably gets a commision out of it.

I have been with my accountant for over 10 years and in 2013 when I had closed the previous company I paid around £4K + VAT to close it (got my VAT back).

At that time I went ahead with it because I was going on holiday outside the country for more than 4 weeks and didn't bother to shop around.

I checked with MVL Online and they have quoted approximately £1500 + VAT but they have a long list of requirements that need to be satisfied before they can proceed with the liquidation.

Does the £3,500 look reasonable? As I won't have to do any running around and my accountant will deal directly with the liquidation company and also the fact that he has not raised his monthly fees in the last so many years.

£3500 is what you pay if you can't be arsed to complete the reasonable list from MVL Online.

I wasn't prepared to waste £1K on something that I could do easily even when I was in contract.

But go ahead, £3500 is the going amount for you not doing anything.

[rambaugh]

The accountant is a single point of contact for you and will manage the Insolvency Practitioner so you're paying a premium for this however its convenient.

You'll reduce the cost by a bit if you instead engaged an independent IP but this will mean shopping around for an Insolvency practitioner and once you've found one you will need to manage the process of getting the information from accountant to IP and vice-versa yourself which will involve your time. The liquidation process will also take longer overall.

[rasputin1969]

I recently used MVL online and they were excellent. In terms of the requirements they need before stepping in, won’t you need to complete almost all of them either way? Is it not just a matter of timing?

My affairs were really quite simple. I used ebay to calculate a fair market price for any equipment bought via the company and transferred that value into the company bank account.

[ChimpMaster]

Frankly £3.5k is bloody ridiculous on top of the monthly fee. The tasks involved are straightforward and the monthly fee you pay already covers the annual / end-of-year accounts.

[mogga71]

Hi,

I am in the process of closing my company and my account has quoted me £3,500 + VAT for the whole process and I have a balance of approximately £40K in my company.

I do pay my accountant his monthly fees and he hasn't raised his fees in the last so many years (I pay £90 per month).

My accountant uses an external liquidation company and probably gets a commision out of it.

I have been with my accountant for over 10 years and in 2013 when I had closed the previous company I paid around £4K + VAT to close it (got my VAT back).

At that time I went ahead with it because I was going on holiday outside the country for more than 4 weeks and didn't bother to shop around.

I checked with MVL Online and they have quoted approximately £1500 + VAT but they have a long list of requirements that need to be satisfied before they can proceed with the liquidation.

Does the £3,500 look reasonable? As I won't have to do any running around and my accountant will deal directly with the liquidation company and also the fact that he has not raised his monthly fees in the last so many years.

When I was considering using an MVL my accountant quoted exactly the same amount as actually closing the company without a liquidator being involved (ie. a strike off rather than an MVL). That is £397.00 plus VAT. So basically it would have cost that £397 + what MVL Online charge ..... which would be a lot less than £3,500.