I have just had an accountant I used in 2009 tell me I never paid him for filing accounts that year. I never used her again and the business was closed down. As the director of the company can she do this. it isn't a lot of money but I can't recall if I paid it or not and I'm surprised at the contact after almost seven years.

Dear all, Thanks for the fantastic job of running this great forum. A friend of mine kindly referred this to me today. My situation (apologies for the length): In 2012 (sept) i urgently needed a set of my company accounts (ltd company) for Visa purposes so i spoke to an accountant and he said he would be able to help me. All i needed was 4 months (my company had already stopped trading st that point) of account statements he charged me £1100 and he said this included annual tax filing as well. There was no terms/condition of service was provided to me or signed, all these happened verbally (i made a bank transfer to his account). He did prepared the documents (though i had to review and suggest changes heavily), and i used the documents for my application which was successful. After around 11 months he send me an invoice of £800 for tax filing purposes and when i inquired he said this is the charge for annual tax filing 12/13 (my ltd company only operated for 6 months). I was very surprised the charge, informed him that this is not we discussed or agreed and my upfront payment should also cover the tax filing. There was no indication from his side about this charge and i was only aware when i received the invoice. And on top of this the charges are really high for filing (only filing, no invoices to customer or any other activities) for 6 months. But he was very adamant despite me offering him a goodwill payment of £100. He has now filed a claim (issued on 05/08/14), i have done the acknowledgement via MCOL and now need to file the defense. My key points are: 1. There was no clear terms of agreement provided by the service provider. 2. There was no clear breakdown of charges 3. I clearly mentioned him that my company was not operating anymore (so he knows that all he has to do is calculate 6 months worth of transactions for tax filing) 4. I have been prompt in paying him the agreed charges (paid him the £1100 straight away as a single payment). 4. Whatever charges he is claiming for the services he has provided is quite high (i checked with few other accountants and i was told that i should not cost more than £350 for just tax filing and my accountant is claiming £1900 in total). 5. I have been consistently in communication with the accountant and disputed this claim. does the above points makes a decent defense or do i need to think more? Also is there any stickies for 'how to put a good defense' I am very new to this and your valuable insights will help me to make my case. Thanks for your help! Regards, Vincent

Hope I have started this in the right forum. Quick summary of dilemma. My OH needed to do his tax returns for 2012-2013....I thought I would help by finding an accountant. I found a firm which looked like they were quite professional. They gave a quote for their fee for approx £120....and sent a form for OH to sign and also all the information about his self employment....earnings, profit and expenses etc etc. The accountant calculated what the OH had to pay as tax and NI contributions. This is where it went upside down. Just before we were deciding to go ahead my OH received news about a family member that had passed away and he had to go abroad....he is still there as his mother is also terminally ill. But before he went he asked his friend if he would help him submit his tax return which he did. I sent an email to the accountant advising that OH had to leave due what had happened.....since then I have received several emails from the account requesting that we pay his fee of £120.00. The last email he sent was yesterday : We notice that you have not settled our outstanding account. Unless we receive payment within the next 21 days, we shall consider issuing proceedings to recover the outstanding sum. This may involve you in further costs. In accordance with our terms and conditions, we shall also charge a further £25.00 plus VAT for chasing the debt. We look forward to hearing from you. Kind regards We have not got a copy of their terms and conditions...all communication was done via email....but will double check to see all the same. The last thing I want is to get involved in any sort of legal proceedings but do not know what to do. Yes we did contact this accountant and the figures that he added were less than what my OH submitted to HMRC..... Now this accountant wants his full fee even though we did not advise him to send off the information but he did send HMRC the form my OH signed saying that he had instructed them. HMRC sent a notification to the accountant that my OH had submitted his tax returns. It was not our intention to do this...but the accountant is asking his full fee but we did not use that full service....now he is threatening to issue proceedings....plus I cannot do anything until OH returns which to be honest could be a while....and I do not want any claim form landing on my doorstep either. Please could anyone advise how to sort out this stupid mess I seem to have got us in? and does the accountant have the power to issue a claim in such circumstances? If I had to file a defence this will all look so ridiculous in court.....I would think? Thank you all in advance for any help on this matter.

we have been given a £750 penalty from companies house for late filing, although it was our accountant that filed it a month late after much nagging from us to get it done. i am making an appointment with the senior partner today to discuss our complaint.. from what i have read we should just pay the fine, then try to get it back from the accountant, but for £750 is it financially worth it, legal costs etc?... is there anything we can do? it sticks in my throat to do nothing. obviously we are taking our business elsewhere, but all too late!

Well, first off this is for my mums partner and asking here as I cant seem to find the or a correct section to place this issue. Anyway for the last tax year my mums partner who is a self employed taxi driver and pays an accountant to go through all his income to correctly try and work out just how much he has to pay out to the tax man etc. He apparently paid the previous accountant about the £400 mark to sort his accounts out for the year and ended up with a a tax bill of about £1600 according to the first accountant. When HMRC looked at the details they refused the findings on the basis that they were all wrong, were not calculated correctly and made little sence to HMRC with what was presented to them as done by the accountant. My mums partner then had to go to another accountant (costing more than the first I think as they needed sorting quickly) and pay a second time for everything to be done, this time correctly so and the calculated tax was correct at near half the amount due in tax that the previous accountant had calculated. Now the issue is that my mum feels he probably has a right to claim back what the first accountant was payed, about £400 as they never did the job they were paid to correctly and he had to pay a second accountant to go over everything again. I also feel he probably does have a right to claim back what he paid the first accountant but a little unsure and my mums partner feels he does not want to make a fuss unless there is a clear issue of he is entitled to and can rightfully claim back what the first accountant was paid yet failed to do what they were paid to do. So does anyone know what rights my mums partner has when an accountant is paid to go over a persons accounts. incorrectly does them, findings refused by HMRC leaving him to pay a second accountant to correctly sort things out?.

Hi All Wonder if someone might be able to advise me if I can claim back the fee I paid to an accountancy firm plus time spent finding out they had "lied" to me. I am a one-man company. 8 Nov 2010: I handed my company accounts to an accountancy firm 2 months before my accounts were due to Companies House. This has not been a problem in the past. I called up at the end of November to talk to the accountant who normally handles my accounts to find out how things were going and to let him know that I was leaving the country. I was unable to speak with him personally and was told the message would be passed onto him. 13 Dec: A new accountant from the firm introduces himself to me via email. I ask him what has happened to my old accountant. He tells me that the old accountant had poor health and thus left at the end of November. 17 Dec: Accountant completes my accounts and asks me to send back the originals ASAP back to the UK. I email back to ask him to send it via webfiling as this had already been set up for me in the previous year. 22 Dec: He says there are problems at Companies House (CH) as the company has been unable to send anything to CH over the last 3 weeks. I ask him to call CH and ask to send a scanned copy of my accounts to CH. He tells me that they had received an email from CH that they had a skeleton staff due to the weather and that only the originals could be sent to CH. I posted my accounts by express post from the country I was in. This normally has a 2-4 working day delivery time BUT due to the weather conditions were not guarantee-ing the delivery. CH received my accounts on 4 Jan 2011. 4 days late and thus received a penalty. I appealed the penalty and got a waiver but the accounts would still be filed late. I also received a letter in January 2011, co-incidentally backdated to Dec 13 that the accountant I used to deal with had left the company due to ill health. 2011: Unfortunately I delivered my accounts late to CH a second time (my fault - got confused between HMRC and Companies House as this was the first time I had done my company accounts myself) I was thus given a double penalty for having delivered my accounts late twice in a row. I appealed the 2010 late filing and found out from CH that: 1. There was no issues with their web filing in 2010. I thus asked the ex-accountant to send me the failed delivery slip. They sent me a failed delivery slip that indicated there was a failure on their side due to their template not aligning with CH and I found out the email was an internal email and not from CH. 2. They would have accepted a signed copy of the accounts. One of the directors from my ex-accountant's company has indicated that: 1. I handed my accounts to them late and so they were unable to turn it around in time. 2. It was my responsibility to get my accounts in on time (as specified in CH's regulations).....I wonder why I employed a firm of accountants!!! 3. The double penalty is independent of 2010. (one gets a double penalty for late filing in 2 consecutive years) 4. Since I settled their fee with them, I have accepted that everything was fine. This was my mistake as I was not happy with the service provided at the time but was being given the run around and decided to pay them their fee and to never use them again. I also recently found out that the original accountant's contract had been terminated with the company in the 2nd week of Nov and so they could have alerted me much sooner about him leaving. (for the last 4 years my relationship has been wholly with the original accountant who was pushed out of the company) Would appreciate any guidance here.