FY16/17 accounts

[iteles]

The deadline for our end of year accounts is 17th February 2018.

We'll need to get these in by then but won't be paying any corporation tax as we made a loss this year.

The trickiest thing with this will be how to categorise any loans from DWYL.

[rub1e]

I've done a first pass at filing with Companies House, and there's a £400-odd discrepancy that I'll have to track down in our banking history.

@iteles to send exports of banking history to me for FY16/17

[iteles]

Done!

[rub1e]

For those keeping score at home, the discrepancy was actually closer to £900, and was merely due to FreeAgent displaying things unhelpfully - it was there all along!

Consequently, FY16/17 accounts have been filed, and the reconciliation / filing process will be written up in due course

[iteles]

Under 'Trade debtors'.

Hooray! Thanks for filing these.

Shall we open a new issue for the process?

[rub1e]

Under 'Trade debtors'.

Yeah, that was the category, but the problem was that this appeared in the Balance Sheet "view" but not the P&L "view" - which is what the companies house filing service was asking for. Suspect it's just that FreeAgent refers to things differently, but we'll cover this with our bookkeeper next week.

Shall we open a new issue for the process?

Of course! Issue or md file in the process-handbook repo?

[iteles]

md in this repo ;)

[rub1e]

Quick update: accounts were filed with Companies House (as above), and HMRC have been informed that we have no Corporation Tax to pay.

We will need to file two sets of accounts with HMRC before May 2018 (to cover the long period of 17th May 2016 - 17th May 2017, and the short period of 18th May 2017 - 31st May 2017), but as far as HMRC are concerned, we're up to date for the moment.

The issue now is that there's a problem with logging in to the HMRC online system, and that will require another phone call with a different department 😵 .

[rub1e]

Bumping up to P1 as this needs to be done in the next 3.5 weeks.

Tried to speak to them today (8th May) but I'm in Space4 and I need info that's in a drawer in FocusHub 🤦‍♂️

Update 9/5 - after 20 mins on hold the online account is all sorted, I just need to wait for a code which will arrive next week

[rub1e]

Update 22/5 - we have access to the system and I've started the Corporation Tax submission, but there are various technical tax questions that I need to get a second opinion on (e.g. do we count as making money from property if we don't own the property), and I've not been able to get hold of our bookkeeper.

[rub1e]

30/5

The tax return was very straightforward - as it was only for the short period of 17th to 31st May 2017.

I'm slightly concerned as I was expecting to be filing for the whole of 16/17 (long period) - so I'll call them back tomorrow once today's submission has been registered.

I've documented this where the Userid and Password are stored, but anyone reading this might want to know this little nugget:

All the various online government systems use different databases, and they have different requirements for your passwords.

Our password was 14 characters long, which allowed us to log in, but not to do the submission - because the HMRC submission password is maximum 12 characters long

This resulted in me being locked out of the account twice because I kept entering the "wrong" password

But the third time I called, the nice lady from HMRC told me to just use the same password without the final two characters - and it worked!

[rub1e]

The submission was accepted six days ago and we've not had any messages in our online account - it only takes two days to process the submission so I'll wait a couple more days just to be sure and then I'm happy to close this off.

[rub1e]

13/6 - Just checked and we have no alerts or messages, so closing this off now

I'll document anything important as part of #140 or #135

[rub1e]

As if this wasn't already tedious enough, HMRC have now charged us a penalty of £100 for filing a late return, even though I have the submission receipt from a day before the deadline.

So I'll see if I can get them to cancel the penalty over the phone, but failing that we'll have to provide a written appeal

[rub1e]

😠

Per https://github.com/dwyl/focus-hub/issues/133#issuecomment-393170803, I thought I had to file two returns but was categorically told I only had to do one (the short period) by HMRC

I've now just spoken to the penalty people and the nice man said that's total nonsense and we do in fact have to do the long period as well.

He said I should file the long return as originally planned, and then send in an appeal explaining what happened - and that they would most likely be lenient because it's our first return and clearly we weren't just ignoring it because we did file that one return. They also record phone calls so he said they could check that.

Long story short, I'm filing another return and appealing the penalty

[rub1e]

I've filed the return. It's really not that hard with FreeAgent calculating everything. It is, however, stressful - especially when you've spend half an hour looking for a £1 discrepancy before deciding it's down to rounding.

I'll draft the appeal now and send it later today

[rub1e]

Penalty appeal letter drafted and shared with @iteles

Once approved will be sent via registered mail to HMRC

Quietly confident

[iteles]

@rub1e Reviewed! I took a little of the mea culpa out of it because you're too nice and honestly, it's their 'culpa', given they told you to only submit one return.

Ready to go :shipit:

[rub1e]

Yeah, good amends. I was trying to balance taking ownership with apportioning blame 😁

[rub1e]

Sent

[rub1e]

I've just tried to check with HMRC that they've received the appeal letter - they claim they haven't, but I have the confirmation from Royal Mail that it was signed for and collected

So

I'm going to send it again tomorrow if they've not got it yet BUT I'm just going to pay the £100 penalty so we don't get chased in the meantime

(The HMRC lady said that it would just be refunded if we won the appeal, no harm no foul.)

(She also said we'd filed the missing accounts so there's no danger of getting more penalty notices, just chases for payment of the first penalty notice)

[rub1e]

The nice man from HMRC helped me get to the bottom of this. They never received the appeal because the appeal was delivered to the wrong place by the Royal Mail, but it was signed for - so as far as we knew, it had been delivered.

So now I'm going to re-print the original appeal with a note at the top explaining the situation, along with our Royal Mail tracking code to prove that we did originally send it (the nice man said he'd put a note on the system confirming that story)

And then I'm going to send in a claim to Royal Mail for royally messing us around 😠

[rub1e]

(He also said that I didn't need to bother with paying the penalty, it makes no difference to the appeal and they're not going to put a black mark next to our names if we don't)

[rub1e]

Boom - confirmation that we're off the hook and have nothing to pay

[rub1e]

Now this is out of the way, this issue can be re-closed as there's nothing more to be done with the 16/17 accounts