Originally posted by van pham
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Reply to: Put my company on hold
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Previously on "Put my company on hold"
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Originally posted by Maslins View PostThis.
If you want to keep your company fully ticking over for what's anticipated to be a brief stint between contracts, then don't expect accountancy fees to plummet. Payroll will still likely require filing every month, VAT every quarter, accounts/CT return/SA return every year, and still a cost of your bookkeeping software, answering the inevitable queries you'll have from time to time even where employed elsewhere. If your accountant is offering to do all this for £35+VAT/month, then in my opinion that is a bargain, not expensive at all.
If your company is fully dormant, de-registered for all the main taxes etc, then different story. Here it just needs to file annual accounts with no income/expenditure going through it. This is a very modest task. £35+VAT/month would be slightly expensive for this, but getting your company into/out of that state is a fair bit of work.
However, getting to dormant stage requires 90% of the faff of closing the company, and isn't viable for a contractor having a period of maybe 6 months without work. Our view is proper dormancy is of no use to a contractor. Either keep the company ticking over fully (so you can revert back to using it at short notice, but expect to pay non trivial accountancy fees even while you're not invoicing), or close it.
In my opinion this is perhaps one of the things most misunderstood by Ltd Co contractors. There is no cheap/easy way to "pause" your company if you have a break of a few months between contracts.
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Originally posted by Lance View PostA dormant company is different to a company that has no revenue or expenses.
If you want to keep your company fully ticking over for what's anticipated to be a brief stint between contracts, then don't expect accountancy fees to plummet. Payroll will still likely require filing every month, VAT every quarter, accounts/CT return/SA return every year, and still a cost of your bookkeeping software, answering the inevitable queries you'll have from time to time even where employed elsewhere. If your accountant is offering to do all this for £35+VAT/month, then in my opinion that is a bargain, not expensive at all.
If your company is fully dormant, de-registered for all the main taxes etc, then different story. Here it just needs to file annual accounts with no income/expenditure going through it. This is a very modest task. £35+VAT/month would be slightly expensive for this, but getting your company into/out of that state is a fair bit of work.
However, getting to dormant stage requires 90% of the faff of closing the company, and isn't viable for a contractor having a period of maybe 6 months without work. Our view is proper dormancy is of no use to a contractor. Either keep the company ticking over fully (so you can revert back to using it at short notice, but expect to pay non trivial accountancy fees even while you're not invoicing), or close it.
In my opinion this is perhaps one of the things most misunderstood by Ltd Co contractors. There is no cheap/easy way to "pause" your company if you have a break of a few months between contracts.
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Originally posted by hobnob View PostI suggest that you stick with your current accountants for now (i.e. keep paying their fees until you're square with HMRC), then transfer to another accountant. I'm with Crunch, and in May 2019 they said that it would cost £75/year or £6.50/month for a dormant company (+VAT); they might have changed their prices in the past year, but £35/month definitely seems excessive!
I don't know who you're with now, but presumably they have some option for you to export all your historical records in a standard format so that you can import them elsewhere?
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If you have very little knowledge of accounting then what do you base your decision that 35 quid a month is too much?
And if know know so little surely any amount of money is worth it.
How much work would you give your client for £35 a month?
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Thank you
Thank you for you advice. I am with a firm called Churchill Knight. They do give me an option to export documents to PDF. As you advice, I think I will move to Crunch after I have paid all my taxes.
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Thank you
Originally posted by hobnob View PostI suggest that you stick with your current accountants for now (i.e. keep paying their fees until you're square with HMRC), then transfer to another accountant. I'm with Crunch, and in May 2019 they said that it would cost £75/year or £6.50/month for a dormant company (+VAT); they might have changed their prices in the past year, but £35/month definitely seems excessive!
I don't know who you're with now, but presumably they have some option for you to export all your historical records in a standard format so that you can import them elsewhere?
Leave a comment:
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I suggest that you stick with your current accountants for now (i.e. keep paying their fees until you're square with HMRC), then transfer to another accountant. I'm with Crunch, and in May 2019 they said that it would cost £75/year or £6.50/month for a dormant company (+VAT); they might have changed their prices in the past year, but £35/month definitely seems excessive!
I don't know who you're with now, but presumably they have some option for you to export all your historical records in a standard format so that you can import them elsewhere?
Leave a comment:
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Put my company on hold
Hello everyone,
I hope you could help me on this. I was out contracting for 18 months, then COVID hits. So I decide go back to permanent for now, however I don’t want to close my company but keep it as inactive. My accountant company want £35 + VAT a month to maintain my company, which I think is too expensive. I asked them to help calculate the tax I have to pay to HMRC before I close the account with them but they refused to help. Would someone point me to a good options, as I have very little knowledge about accounting.
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