Coronavirus - Deferral of VAT Payments

Deferral of VAT Payments

VAT payments that are due to be paid during the period from now until 30th June 2020 can be deferred.  Here is a link to the UK Government's deferral of VAT payments website:   https://www.gov.uk/guidance/deferral-of-vat-payments-due-to-coronavirus-covid-19

There is no application required for deferring your VAT payment and no interest or penalties will be charged on the deferred VAT payments.

The deferred VAT amounts are due to be 'caught up with' and paid by 31st March 2021.

If you pay your VAT by Direct Debit and are deferring your VAT payment, you MUST CANCEL the VAT Direct Debit, otherwise the VAT payment will be collected.  If you do cancel the VAT Direct Debit, you then have to remember to set it up again after the end of June 2020, if you want to re-commence paying your VAT by Direct Debit.

Remember, if you pay your VAT by Direct Debit, you are given at least an extra three days to pay, sometimes longer if there is a weekend and/or a bank holiday.

VAT Returns should still be completed and submitted as usual.  Therefore, if we maintain your VAT records, can we please request that you continue to provide us with the information on a regular basis, in an effort to try to complete and submit VAT Returns on time?

Due to the recently introduced 'social distancing rules' this can be done either by post, by dropping documentation etc. through the letterbox at our office premises, or by providing us with electronic (scanned) documents.  If dropping documentation through our letterbox, please put the documentation in a plastic bag, or other protective cover, as sometimes the wind can blow rain underneath the front doors and working with soggy paperwork is not particulary pleasant.

We now have an online file sharing portal, with which we can share (upload and download) electronic documents, view them and, where appropriate, approve documents electronically.   If you would like access to our online file sharing portal, please provide us with the email address that you would like to use to access the portal and confirm that you give consent to electronically approve documents.  We will then send a separate email to that email address containing a link to set up a password, after which you will have access to your own portal, where you can upload your electronic (scanned) documents, view and download documents that we upload, electronically approve documents etc.

If you are emailing scanned documents, or uploading scanned documents to the online file sharing portal, can we ask you to scan the documents in Portable Document Format (PDF), rather than photographs or images (JPEG), please?  JPEG's tend to be much larger file sizes than PDF's and, as a result, JPEG's consume much more electronic storage space than PDF's.