Should I charge VAT?

[Davis]

Hi,

I have an LTD Company that provides management consulting services and it is not a vat registered. So far, I had 1 client and I did not charge any VAT. I purchased a PC for my professional use on which I paid VAT. I understand that I need to register for VAT to be able to claim it back. Here are 3 precise questions I have and I thank you for your help:
1. If I register for VAT, should I charge VAT for my next clients? (suppose that revenues remain under the threshold of 85 000£ for this tax year)
2. Should pay back any VAT to HMRC on the previous revenue (on which I did not charge any VAT)?
3. If I don’t need to charge VAT for the future invoices (output VAT), can I only claim the expense on my professional expense (input VAT)?

Thanks a lot for your help.
Best,
MED

[vatconsultant]

1. Yes you can register for VAT voluntarily and charge Vat on your sales but recover input VAT.

2. You only charge VAT from the VAT registration date. You can however recover input VAT for the past 6 months (services) or 4 years (goods still in use).

3. No its either you register for VAT – therefore charge VAT and claim input VAT. Or you don’t register for VAT and do not charge VAT nor claim input VAT.

Hope this helps.

Regards

[rainbow123]

Managing your VAT obligations can be quite a hard task especially if your just starting out. Might be worth looking into a reliable software to help manage all this. I did the same when I started my business. There are quite a few on the market but as your business starts to grow and if you ever start providing your services into other countries in the EU you would have a different VAT threshold for that which means it wont be the standard UK 20%. There is a cross border VAT software that might be useful for this and I believe it also notifies you as and when you need to register for VAT in a particular country too. Apparently there is no other software that does that. Anyways hope this helps

[Author]

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