Sunday Solutions Anyone Else Having A Problem

[Cheshire_cat]

Sunday/Bradbury charges?

I have received my accounts. My accountant does not understand what the charges relate to and of course Bradbury just ignore any e-mails! Please can anyone explain what the ‘Personally Incurred Expenses’ charge relates to? and what are the ‘Expenses introduced’? Thanks.

[Microtots'r'us]

Jaimegarcia

According to my understanding it's the partnership's responsibility. To start to attend to the partnership tax return would need access to the full partnership accounts as prepared by the accountants. Takes you straight back to our silent friends, who will not communicate.

We have to get B & CO to send all partners copies of their partnership tax rerurns and tax comps for patnership along with the account.

it is not sensible to start this over if the Bradbury & co people have completed it but It should be signed by a partner. How do they manage that trick? Any one recall signing any partnership tax returns?

So now we are faced with conundrum. If that is so do you call or write to HMRC and say I or we did not approve these accounts and tax returns?

Personally I hate the thought that a tax return has been delivered that may or may not be correct with figures that may or may not be correct that probably has not been seen by any of the hard working guys whose income from their businesses is included on that return. So how do we get access to this?

[Microtots'r'us]

I have received my accounts. My accountant does not understand what the charges relate to and of course Bradbury just ignore any e-mails! Please can anyone explain what the ‘Personally Incurred Expenses’ charge relates to? and what are the ‘Expenses introduced’? Thanks.

‘Personally Incurred Expenses’= Should be what you claimed as expenses that you sent to them to process.

‘Expenses introduced’ = Could be any expenses recovered( i.e. reimbursed)

I know Bradbury is ever helpful with a total lack of guidance and explanation.
But I suggest that your accountant needs to think about what contracting is about. It's not his fault that it is not clear ......but no need to panic

[Rhines]

I have drafted a letter to Barclays which I will post tomorrow. I am not sure if there is an account in the Partnership name as Bradbury may just have been careful to always put the Partnership in the desc and in one case clearly list it as the actual account name. I will be sending the Partnership agreement which lists all partners none of which approved a bank transfer from the Barclays account to HMRC.

If there is no Partnership account and the account belongs to Bradbury then by sending the accounts pages which state they do not have access to the funds, my bank statements and the bank transfer they can see that they are deliberately misleading people in to believing the partnership accounts are separate. If the account is linked to the Partnership I believe I should be entitled to access them as a listed Partner on a document which I assume is legally binding, I will also send a copy of my 07/08 tax return provided by HMRC which also shows I am a partner and query why funds are being authorised by persons not listed. Either way I feel they should at least investigate the complaint.

This may not get me anywhere but I figure it's worth a go.

[bradburyhell]

Another Thomas Arnott parter

I received my accounts today for Thoma Arnott partnership 2008/09 I joined in June 2008 - they are asking to go online to agree them, but I don't understand it as my biggest concern is that I'll owe HMRC and they've been taking deductions but I don't know waht the process is for that money to go to HMRC for 2008/09. I'm using Von Essen at moment and don't know what to do if to approve them - they ar eshowing an undistriputed amount of £5.5k is that the money for HMRC or what as based on the forecast I would owe about 10k

I'm pretty certain that this amount is what they reckon you are due (including your tax liability). I am also a partner in the Thomas Arnott partnership. I still haven't received any accounts or (more importantly) any money. So, if they tell you that one of the partners hasn't agreed their accounts; they may mean me, 'cos I haven't had them. If you want to make contact with me, I think you need to ask the administrator to enable PM rights. From reading this thread (the story gets more horrifying by the post) we may need to try to contact the others. I have joined the action group and indeed the joint legal action. I recommend you do the same.
Kind regards.

[Titanic]

Just got my letter from Bradbury with the accounts. Nothing unexpected. Same twaddle as last year. The accountancy costs, sunday "IP" fees, and many other charges are over-inflated and have no resemblance to the original forecast. The idea that certain 'costs' are annualized and therefore fixed seems to me just another of their tactics to cream more money off us. Sunday Solutions never mentioned anything about a fixed and annualized "Intellectual Property Fee". It's just ridiculous. Why would it be fixed and annualized rather than based on number of days or hours worked? I could see how insurance deals, and perhaps some legal costs might be fixed and annualized, but the Sunday "Fee" was negotiated with us prior to joining, as a %age of hour invoices, and they can't just change the terms of that fee a couple of years later, when the company doesn't even exist anymore. Incidentally when did they start calling it an "Intellectual Property Fee" instead of a "Sunday Management Charge"? They probably decided to change the name when they realized that otherwise they might be seen to break MSC legislation. And, finally, we were told at the beginning that the Sunday fee would cover everything, including legal costs, insurances, etc. The fact that they now come back and say otherwise is nonesense.

I am also unconviced by this concept of "introducing expenses" into the partnership. Maybe I just don't get it. But the line under 'Expenses introduced' just doesn't make sense to me, and I've looked at it for a couple of hours now.

I cannot in good conscience approve these accounts, when there's every reason to believe that they would not stand up to scrutiny.

The idea that they won't release partner's tax provision before you approve their accounts, is nothing short of blackmail. And it's exactly the same thing they did last year. First they tell you that they will only release money once all accounts are reconciled and approved, then they tell you that if you don't approve them they are probalby going to take 6 months to sort things out, making it clear that by then your tax return will be late and you'll have incurred penalties by HMRC. They apologize for their 'short staffing levels' and explain that they cannot deal with individual questions, but hope you can approve the accounts without really asking any questions. Then they urge you to approve things quickly so that they can close down the partnership and suggest that this would avoid the HMRC investigating you. They say:

"In doing so, this may reduce the risk of further HMRC investigation and any additional tax liability."

What utter rubbish. Who's to say that there is less risk of an HMRC investigation just because the partnership is closed? And what do we care if other people are being investigated for IR35? If the HMRC ever wants to question my IR35 status they will have to get involved with me directly. If HMRC finds that I should have indeed been an 'employee', I'll just pay them the extra tax. At least the money is going to our government, and not to the Bradbury / Sunday.

Its easy to massage some imaginary numbers so that the end result for "undistributed profits" is in parentheses - a negative figure - implying that we now owe them money. As if they hadn't done enough to mess us about, now they want some money back, with a veiled threat that they've got a "debt-collection process" to "assist in the reconciliation of the current outstanding debtors & creditors position". I wonder what they mean by "debt-collection process". No doubt they are thinking of paying a debt-collection agency to bully people into paying money back.

I, for one, am not approving these accounts. Not until I see all the details behind them. I need bank account statements, VAT returns, expense receipts, invoices from the various companies. Details for the partnership as a whole. Given Bradbury's vow of silence and previous behaviour I doubt I'll ever see any of this, for it would probably expose their scam. I'm sorry if this means other parters won't get paid immediately. You should blame Bradbury, because if it wasn't for their fictitious costs they wouldn't be demanding money back from the partners. If they were doing things properly each partner's earnings would be segregated, at least on paper, and there would be no chance of one partner's debt affecting another partner's credit. The idea that they have to wait for all partner's to be reconciled is just a ploy to distract us from the people who are really in control.

[Titanic]

I have drafted a letter to Barclays which I will post tomorrow. I am not sure if there is an account in the Partnership name as Bradbury may just have been careful to always put the Partnership in the desc and in one case clearly list it as the actual account name. I will be sending the Partnership agreement which lists all partners none of which approved a bank transfer from the Barclays account to HMRC.

Good luck with this. I'll be keen to find out if you succeed obtaining this information.

[FeedtheKids]

I could see how insurance deals, and perhaps some legal costs might be fixed and annualized, but the Sunday "Fee" was negotiated with us prior to joining, as a %age of hour invoices, and they can't just change the terms of that fee a couple of years later, when the company doesn't even exist anymore.

An important point to note here - Sunday Solutions Ltd does still exist and could potentially still have a very healthy bank balance (only Andrew would know). This is assuming that the money went from Reed Morgan (in my case) via Sunday Solutions to Bradbury. Does anybody have any insight on how this might have worked - is it possible we could be focused on Bradbury when, in fact, we should still be looking at Sunday Solutions? Who were we actually contracted with?

[Rhines]

According to Willowmeade the money was transferred in full to the Partnership accounts and not to Bradbury or Sunday, hence my note above regarding me writing to Barclays.

This doesn't appear to be true for all partnerships as Barclays have advised some partners that no account exists in the partnership name.

[NotImpressed]

I need bank account statements, VAT returns, expense receipts, invoices from the various companies. Details for the partnership as a whole. Given Bradbury's vow of silence and previous behaviour I doubt I'll ever see any of this, for it would probably expose their scam. I'm sorry if this means other parters won't get paid immediately. You should blame Bradbury, because if it wasn't for their fictitious costs they wouldn't be demanding money back from the partners. If they were doing things properly each partner's earnings would be segregated, at least on paper, and there would be no chance of one partner's debt affecting another partner's credit. The idea that they have to wait for all partner's to be reconciled is just a ploy to distract us from the people who are really in control.

Hi Titanic,

Have you received an email from Bradbury promising to get in contact during the week commencing on 14th? Bradbury say they will be providing a full set of partnership accounts at this point and forwarding all receipts etc held on our behalf to our new accountants. Painful as it may be, we may just need to hang on to see what they send out. Part of me believes (or rather wants to believe) they will because I don't see why they would have sent out partnership accounts at all if they were just planning on taking the money and running.

I have to admit to approving the accounts I was sent in the hope I might at least get some of the undistributed profits promised to me within 6 months/ever. I did take the advice of another poster on this thread by caveating my approval with an email saying I reserved the right challenge their figures later on and requesting a detailed breakdown of the numbers.

If we don't hear any more and/or are left with figures that just don't add up, how would we go about filing tax returns? Speaking with a tax adviser recently, he suggested the following:

1. Ditching the partnership structure with a letter of explanation to HMRC and entering the total invoiced for on an employment page classing the whole lot as employment income with your client as the employer. Of course you would also need to cough up the employer's NICs. As expensive and unpleasant as this might sound, at least it would draw a line under all of this and we could get on with our lives with no fear of future HMRC investigations.

2. Submit what we have and hope for the best pleading ignorance if HMRC come calling at some point in the next 6 years. I suspect in that case though the only settlement they would offer you would be something along the lines of 1 given the absolute lack of evidence we have for the "business expenses" and the general partnership setup.

By the way, it sounds like some people went through all of this with a similarly poor level of customer service, non-sensical accounts and blackmailing Bradbury letters on previous tax years. Could one of these people let us know how that ended up?