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[Maslins]

I'd suggest liaising with either your accountant or FreeAgent's support re this, critically someone who has access to your FreeAgent data. I could speculate about a few possible causes, but I'd just be guessing. If your accountant can fix it quickly each time, they presumably know what's going on, so...

[Maslins]

Lol. The company is dissolved. Ie it's dead. Any debts it might have had would die with it. I guess legally because the company is dead, your directorship of it is perhaps irrelevant now, so they won't speak to you re it? Does beg the question who they would speak to about it now.

I don't...

[Maslins]

"Specified charges" is HMRC PAYE speak for "guesses".

[Maslins]

Re the failed CT submission, we all make mistakes from time to time. Sounds like they dealt with it, paid the fine on your behalf (so remember this mistake did hurt them financially, hence they'll try to avoid repeating it), no long term harm for you.

If you've been with them 14 years and...

[Maslins]

If it does tally with the brolly, yes, I'd agree, I'd be nervous what's going on there.

My guess is it has nothing to do with the brolly (other than the periods happen to coincide), and it's basically just HMRC's automated machine saying "oi you didn't send payroll submissions, so...

[Maslins]

I'd be surprised if this had any connection to your new umbrella work, but hard to know without seeing the letter you're referring to. Do the amounts they're requesting in any way tally with your umbrella work?

If they don't, then based on the limited info in your post and situations we've...

[Maslins]

The bit that confuses me most is if you approved them mid August, it's typically then a 5 minute job for the accountant to submit them. Ie I can't understand that bit causing a delay.

The preparation of the accounts/CT returns ready for your approval/to run queries by you can take a while....

[Maslins]

I don't think it would stop the consulting company qualifying for BADR in itself...but:
1) if the majority of the consulting company's profits are being transferred up to the property company via dividends, there won't be much retained earnings left in the consulting company to warrant MVLing/similar....

[Maslins]

With most of the "pay monthly" contractor accounting firms, if you pay them for the company year, they'll do the statutory stuff for that year, even if you leave them immediately after the year end passes. Ie say year end 31 March 2021, deadline for accounts isn't until 31 Dec 2021, slower...

[Maslins]

You'll typically minimise any risk of duplicated fees/bookkeeping if you move based around your company's year end. You can change whenever, and as NLUK suggests, if you feel your current accountant is utterly useless (rather than just not as great as you'd like) you may decide to jump ship ASAP.

[Maslins]

Depends whether people need the money now or not. You're right though, there will typically be choices for people, that can help mitigate their tax bills. I guess your comment (inadvertently or otherwise) is another nudge towards MVLs being a good option, even if you want to continue working in the...

[Maslins]

You got me thinking...obviously we'll never know full stats for all cases, but thought I'd run some example simplified numbers:
- per this IR35 calculator, with £500/day rate, difference between inside and outside is give or take £1k/month, so £24k over 2 years.
- I'd say a fairly average...

[Maslins]

You're right in a way...but these people are hardly in a terrible position. They got lots of cash out very tax efficiently, and generally just need to be careful about choosing PAYE/umbrella work for a couple of years. The only ones who will be worse off by this will be the high earners with low MVL...

[Maslins]

Legally you can start another similar business, the TAAR doesn't stop that, it just means HMRC may have grounds to challenge the tax treatment of the distributions from the liquidation. The argument being your business never really ceased, you just took a break, so should be taxed on that basis (dividends...

[Maslins]

If you've told HMRC it didn't trade, you should be fine. If HMRC send you a request for a CT return, don't ignore it. Either call them to explain, or send them a letter reiterating it's dormant, perhaps with a copy of the accounts submitted to Companies House. You shouldn't need an accountant for this...

[Maslins]

If a creditor claim were to be lodged, we're on safer ground if we've only distributed half the funds and still have a fairly significant asset we legally control (the remainder of the shareholder loan). We can call some/all of that loan in to clear the creditor. If we'd distributed 100% of the funds...

[Maslins]

As an aside, MVL Online a few months ago migrated to the route of client withdrawing the cash in advance. This is temporarily a loan, then MVLO declare distributions in specie over the course of the liquidation to clear the loan. A few benefits from client perspective:
- client gets all the cash...

[Maslins]

Yeah, but with good motivations when it's at the end of its natural life ...

[Maslins]

IR35 isn't related to paying your taxes on time! It is a bit woolly, but basically is trying to distinguish between someone running a business and a disguised employee. These days the onus on that decision generally rests with the end client, so if they're happy it's outside IR35, you should be fine....