Self-employment, zero VAT returns, do I need an accountant?

nacho66

Hi guys

I've been working as a self-employed, VAT registered person this year, up until 1st September which is a date I switched to full PAYE employment.

I have an accountant that would submit VAT return every 2 months. Since I'm employed now tho, I don't have any income from self employment. I also don't want to submit my expenses. All in all a vat returns for last two months (and two following months in 2013) would equal 0. I don't want to close self employment but on the other hand I don't want to pay my accountant for submitting zeros.

What are my options? Is applying for ROS the only option?

srsly78

VAT is the easy part. Form 11 is the annoying part. You will still have to file a form 11 every year until you stop being self-employed. This is really tedious stuff, I have to fill out form 11 despite all my income being paye.

If you can't be bothered filling out zeroes for VAT you can deregister I believe.

nacho66

I will leave Income Tax return for the whole year to my accountant. I just mean the VAT thing. I don't necessary won't to finish self-employment as I may do some work outside employment early next year. Just trying to figure out what's the easiest way to tell revenue that I have zero on VAT return for last 2 months and not being forced into paying the accountant for just that. Do I need to go through the whole process of registering for ROS? Or is there other way?

jimmii

Yeh register on ROS it takes a while with all the codes they have to post out once its all set up its nice and easy.

VAT returns is pretty straight forward you can do that yourself with no trading it will only take you a couple of minutes to enter a few zeros!

ssbob

jimmii wrote: »

Yeh register on ROS it takes a while with all the codes they have to post out once its all set up its nice and easy.

VAT returns is pretty straight forward you can do that yourself with no trading it will only take you a couple of minutes to enter a few zeros!

You could register for ROS but also do you get the reminder letters for the VAT or is it your accountant as an agent? You can ring them and change this just for the VAT, they will send you a letter with a remittance on the bottom and you just fill in the Zero's and send it back to them.

As an FYI, I wouldn't sell yourself short though, if you have expenses genuinely associated with the self employed part of your business then you should claim these.

Also you may want to think about un-registering for VAT if you are not going to meet the threshold! Your accountant will do this for you.

jimmii

I get reminders so I assume once the details were changed on ROS then they would go out to OP instead.