So, I'm not gonna get my first VAT return done on time (by, like, half a day). What a surprise.
Looked it up and for turnover of less than £150,000 (
) the penalty is... nothing. You get a "polite letter" asking you to submit it. I'll just keep grinding through Xero until its done then. You do however need to submit the next one on time or you enter the "surcharge system".
Even if I were to pay a penalty it's only a % of the tax I owe (the VAT I've charged). I don't owe anything because in the period for the return I've paid several fold what I've charged in VAT, because I've only had to charge VAT for like, a few weeks. I only registered about a month ago, but still they only went and set up my first return for 4 strawberry floating years due within 60 days, which is not very long to go back and recode every single strawberry floating expense as a VATable expense. It varies too (it's not just claim 20% on everything), some Royal Mail delivery services are 20% VAT, whereas stamps (even if its purchased as the equivalent service online) are VAT exempt. Kid's T-shirts are 0% whereas everything else is 20%. Domestic power is 5% whereas power on business premises is 20%. So many fun little oddities like this to research for strawberry floating days).
I also have to find the European VAT IDs for anyone I've imported from, and attempt to find valid VAT invoices (that normally don't exist, never get issued properly by websites, and have to be pieced together, so I'm trying to claim them anyway by just keeping a record of the VAT number in the accounts). It's way harder than it needs to be to find the suppliers who actually sold you the thing, if they sold that thing through a marketplace or a subsidiary (possibly of an international conglomerate). Then there's the brexit transition period in the middle of that, at which point (31 Jan according to some, 31 Dec according to others) I should have been charged 0% VAT from overseas included Ireland, EU states etc, but probably was charged 20% anyway.
It's worth it because I'll get a couple of grand back but strawberry float me is it complicated the first time around. If I didn't have my statements and sales/expenses etc recorded essentially in a web browser already, alongside which I can find old invoices, receipts via email etc in separate tabs, this could well and truly strawberry float off. The people who still do a paper return and print off everything, or use a strawberry floating cash book, and do VAT accounting
I bet they exist and are some kind of pen and paper machine.
Zilnad wrote:What a strawberry floating gooseberry fool show.
Apparently the interviewer was adamant to her director that she wanted to hire me for the job but the director changed their mind about working from home and would only let me have the job if I agreed to go into the office at least two days a week.
It was 100 strawberry floating miles away.
strawberry floating complete waste of time and all that stress and anxiety suffered was for nothing. Told the agency I'm wanting to move pretty quickly now so hopefully something will come along.
Having been on Xero for about 5 years now, I'm deeply sorry you won't be able to discover the joys of Find & Recode and updates that, well, there are no updates, it's always up to date. Sure there's bugs sometimes, having to re-enter this thing, or this value changes for some reason (usually going back and correcting historical records like I am now and reclassifying their tax), but the software has never really strawberry floated up any of my work and that's impressive considering how long I've been using it and it's all got to work 100% remotely on some server somewhere that I don't have to worry about crashing or corrupting.
Automatic PayPal import sucks if you're not on the multi-currency package though, thanks to PayPal dicking around with multiple currencies rather than just converting everything you get paid into GBP if you get paid or have to pay in USD for some reason (like a normal British bank will).
My statements and accounts haven't reconciled for strawberry floating years though (it doesn't matter because my profit/loss statement is still correct and that's the only report I actually need) so I'm probably going to archive the whole organisation and start a new one for this tax year, once I've submitted this, and start fresh.