OT accountants - how much per year/return/??

as per subject line ;>)

sole trader sub 20k turnover nothing complicated

Jim K

Reply to
Jim K
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All depends. Give them a box of unordered receipts and invoices,and it'll be £500+. Give them a neatly, ordered pile, which are sub-divided into different expense types etc, and dated correctly, then you may get away with £250.

Reply to
A.Lee

Totally unnecessary at that level, if you have at least half a brain.

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

And the rest...

Yep, the less work they have to do the better for your wallet. It's not =

difficult to keep good clear records, either in a hand written ledger or= in a spreadsheet. Keep receipts in date order, invoices in paid order. M= y accountant draws up my annual accounts and also does my tax return. It's= the latter that I really employ him for. He's a Tax Accountant, what he =

doesn't know about tax and the current requirements of HMRC and what wil= l (or will not...) raise an eyebrow with them isn't worth knowing.

The Self Employed tax return uses the following categories for allowable= business expenses in boxes:

10 - Cost of goods bought for resale or goods used. 11 - Car/van and travel expenses - after private use proportion. 12 - Wages, salaries and other staff costs. 13 - Rent, rates, power and insurance costs. 14 - Repairs and renewals of property and equipment. 15 - Accountancy, legal and other professional fees. 16 - Interest and bank and credit card etc, charges. 17 - Phone, fax, stationary and other office costs. 18 - Other allowable business expenses - client entertaining costs are not an allowable expense.

You don't need to fill in actual figures in boxes 10 to 18 if your turnover is below =A373,000 (2011/12), just the total in box 19. It's st= ill worth using this break down in your year end accounts though as you can =

see where you are spending money and how things change from year to year= . And should your turnover exceed the limit you have the right numbers to =

put in the boxes...

I'd actually split the "Car/van and travel expenses" into "Car/van" and =

"Travel expenses" categories to keep track of the car/van costs on their= own.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

I agree. I was a sole trader 20k ish turnover. I did my accounts myself for 11 years and presented the paperwork on one A4 sheet of paper to he hmrc every year. It was a good feeling when I used to get the letter x amount of weeks later which said. dear Mr Thomas, thank you for your computation. Your figures have been accepted etc etc. I stopped being self employed for two years then went back to it (same thing) but this time I used an accountant on the belief I was going to get it cheap (friend of a friend thing) It didn't happen. cost was approx £450 per year. all they nearly did was add numbers up 52 times and place everything in a nice folder. My computer did all that before I had sent the paperwork off.

Reply to
Justine Time

wanker

cheers Jim K

Reply to
Jim K

many thanks

Cheers Jim K

Reply to
Jim K

No problem but bear in mind my 2nd sentance above. Keeping the books is easy as others have, somewhat abrasively, pointed out. As is drawing up the end of year Accounts, *provided* you've kept on top of the paper work and not just shoved everything into a shoe box "to do later". The rules for Accounts don't keep changing like the Tax rules do and introduce new things, removing old, altering thresholds etc etc that HMRC do every year. I have better things to do than try and keep up with all the tax changes.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

cue: old accounting joke.

Ask a scientist what is two and two and he will tell you "4."

Ask an engineer and he'll get out his slide rule (I told you it was an old joke) and come back with the answer "approximately 3.9957."

Ask an accountant and he'll reply, "How much do you want it to be, sir?"

Nick

Reply to
Nick Odell

Is the correct answer.....

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

Having just settled my accountants fee (don't ask:-) for the last two years, this thread struck a bit of a bell!

I am now *self employed semi-retired*: bits of the farm business continue to tick over with a turnover of around 10k and a similar amount from rents.

I am confident I can handle VAT returns and annual declarations but struggle to grasp the concept of the capital account. Most of my plant and remaining machinery is fully depreciated so I am beginning to wonder if an accountant is value for money.

What I would really like is an excel spread sheet to replace my Guildhall account book. I have purchased several cheap accounting packages which are either too complex to remember how to use only once in 3 months or don't have enough provision for purchase inputs.

Does such a package exist or must they be individually crafted?

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Reply to
Tim Lamb

I'd agree that an accountant is totally unnecessary at that level. Money in, money out. How difficult can that be? For some reason beginners think having an accountant adds credibility to their operation.

I used one for 10 years but their fees were rising well above inflation each year. The day he told me that he was the one keeping me out of prison was the day he got the boot. I did my own from then on and The Revenue never queried anything I submitted. On one occasion they even drew my attention to an allowance that I had overlooked. The old adage re the tax office remains true. If you go to them, they take their hat off to you. If they come to you, they take your trousers off

I think these days most accountants will give you a copy of their own spreadsheet so that you have only to fill in the details.

Reply to
stuart noble

Keeping on a Tax Accountant will (should!) ensure that you claim everything you are entitled to regarding Pension(s), and other age related allowance(s),

Not that I have much capital plant, that is another reason for having the Tax Accountant I've never got my head around it. Any Capital Gains is another reason.

I use a spreadsheet, it has evolved over the years. It does the VAT maths for both the FRS and Cash Accounting methods (so I can make sure the FRS isn't costing me money). For the next financial year I might look at the expense categories and bring them inline with HMRC's but they are pretty close anyway.

As you say keeping the books, VAT returns etc is simple. It's the Tax side that is a nightmare, partly because it's so damn complex and partly beacuse they keep fiddleing with the rules, abolish one allowance but bring in something else etc etc. If you present a Tax Accountant with a nice clear spreadsheet printout that has done all the maths and has the right numbers (nett v gross) and all the supporting paper work nicely ordered as per the spreadsheet lines, it really shouldn't cost that much for them to do the Tax Return.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

In message , at 23:49:15 on Fri, 25 Jan 2013, Nick Odell remarked:

I'm old enough to remember that slide rules do multiplication, division and so on, not addition (yes, they add logs together, but not numbers like 2+2).

Reply to
Roland Perry

Almost easier to roll your own.

Capital asset register is simply a place where you stick stuff that you use, so that you can write it off over a period and reduce profits, and hence tax, but stops you from claiming it as a once off expense in the first year.

So if you e.g. buy a tractor, the cost of it does NOT go into the P&L, it goes into the capital register and a fraction of that can be removed and added to the loss side of the P&L each year.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I suspect a lot of my accountants bill is the office trainee entering my hand written data to their Sage software so they can reconcile bank accounts and card statements. Annoyingly, I have already spent time doing a full reconciliation manually so they never find anything.

Capital gains on property is fairly straightforward now.

Currently and luckily the VAT people are very relaxed about chasing late returns as they invariably owe me money.

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Reply to
Tim Lamb

I have tried. There are numerous tutorials available and they appear to make sense at the time. 6 weeks later it reverts to being a mystery:-)

Yes. That is clear enough. The downside is when you sell a depreciated asset for more than the written down value.

I suppose the mystery for me is compounded by the inclusion of farm buildings and land which are not separately identified and appear each year as a global figure. Part of the accountants mystique!

Reply to
Tim Lamb

Any man who denies it is a liar. How about you?

Doesn't alter what I said, unless, of course, you *don't* have half a brain. You should cut down on the w*****g, and develop the business. One day it nay be large enough to make an accountant worthwhile. Then you can use the time saved to go play with yourself.

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

Were they both sub 20K turnover in today's money? If not, what point are you trying to make?

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

I was thinking that these days the scientist would say "4 with sigma 5" and the engineer would say "4".

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

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