Automated VAT payments via QF?

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1

I have just filed a number of VAT returns for a client who had made a number of payments on account to HMRC pending the finalisation of the VAT returns. He only owed £601.51 as a result of the returns getting up to date.

However, the automated emails I receive from QF suggest that his account will be debited by the amounts owed for each of the VAT returns in a couple of days - in total over £10,000!

I have had a look into the management information and payment information held on the client’s QF account and cannot find anything pertaining to an authorisation to instruct payments / direct debits to occur.

Does anyone know if QF has the authority to instruct HMRC to collect the direct debit, or whether the authority is held in the government gateway account with HMRC?

Many thanks,

Mike

2

We don’t have any authority to instruct collection, the authority is held with HMRC. When a VAT return is filed electronically to HMRC they return a flag in their response that indicates if a Direct Debit instruction is present on the account. We read this and vary our email message accordingly.

To my knowledge HMRC don’t tell us what funds are on account, they just tell us whether or not they’ll be collecting via DD. If you ping me the account number on a private message I can inspect the raw HMRC response in detail for you.

3

Thanks Glenn. I’ll take it up with HMRC then - last time they took a duplicate payment!

Best wishes,

MIke

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