After a tragic accident, Specialised Movers of Sheffield were investigated by the HSE. Although the matter was resolved another problem followed: the VAT man.

Those of you who read Nigel Shaw’s tale of woe at the hands of the Health and Safety Executive in the May issue of The Mover (page 36) will recall that the story was incomplete.

Nigel’s story was about the problems he had and the money he lost as a result of a tragic accident.  Although Nigel’s problems with the HSE were resolved, eventually, the VAT people still had to do their worst. 

Nigel, from Specialised Movers in Sheffield, explained that after the accident the HSE took all his books to do a financial investigation, presumably to establish whether any financial difficulties might have caused any H&S corners to be cut. While the books were missing he was unable to file a VAT return for that quarter and defaulted on a payment of around £30,000.

“We informed the VAT office that we couldn’t make the payment,” explained Nigel. “They accepted that we could make stage payments, sent us a letter accepting the arrangement and said that they understood our position.”

The stage payments continued at £10,000 a month for four years.  The VAT office never changed the arrangement.  Then the bombshell hit. “We got a VAT bill for £105,000,” said Nigel. “They said it was for surcharges for default going back five years because we hadn’t paid the VAT on time.”  The company was advised to pay £1000/month while the matter was resolved to keep the VAT office off its back.

Last year Specialised Movers took the VAT office to court.  The VAT office said it had been sending default notices to Nigel, but he had not responded.  Nigel had not received the notices. They insisted that they had been sent so they must have been received.

Nigel’s solicitors did some digging.  It emerged that the premises’ postcode had changed three years earlier but the default notices, that were supposed to have been sent five years before, all carried the new postcode.  Nigel’s conclusion was that the notices had all been recreated after the event otherwise the older ones would have carried the old postcode.  The judge thought all was not well either and instructed the VAT office to pay Specialised Movers £45,000 instead of the company paying £105,000 in surcharges.

The irony is that it was probably the letter of agreement sent to Nigel by the VAT office, agreeing to the stage payments, that had, quite correctly, stopped the computer-generated default notices being sent out in the first place. It was only the chance event that the postcode had changed that exposed what the VAT office had done. 

The matter is now resolved without a stain on Specialised Movers’ character. But what a nightmare!

  Nigel Shaw