Outsourcing your VAT return

What it costs

A one-off VAT return costs EUR 65, including processing your records for that period. No scale by size: thirty receipts or three hundred, the price is the same.

If there is more to do, a monthly package works out cheaper. From EUR 69 a month we handle your records, every VAT return of the year, the EC Sales List and your income tax return.

All amounts exclude VAT, and as a business you reclaim that VAT anyway.

What you supply

An email. That is all. Photos of receipts, PDFs of invoices, an export from your bank: forward it as it reaches you. You do not have to buy accounting software or learn anything.

Once a quarter is enough. Collect it and send it in one go after the quarter closes. If something is missing, you hear it from us before the deadline comes into view.

What goes wrong when you do it yourself

The mistakes we see most are not dramatic, but they run on for years:

• A rate copied from an old quote and never checked again
• VAT on food and drink in hospitality venues deducted where it may not be
• Private use of the car missing from the last return of the year
• A reverse charge that stopped being correct when the customer moved
• An EC Sales List that does not tie in to box 3b, putting the zero rate at risk

Then there is the deadline. Filing and payment must both be in within one month of the end of the period, and they are two separate obligations with separate penalties. Filing late costs EUR 82, rising to EUR 165 for persistent default.

When it pays for itself

Work out how many hours a quarter you spend on VAT and what your own hourly rate is. For most businesses that is more than EUR 65.

And that leaves out the time spent wondering whether it is right. If you find an error later, a correction up to EUR 1,000 can go in your next return, but above that you file a separate correction return and pay interest.