Covid 19 VAT Deferral Scheme

For any businesses that postponed VAT payments during March and June of 2020, HMRC have revealed the payment scheme they have developed to repay these bills.  HMRC have offered payments of up to 12 interest free installments, depending on when the business entered the scheme. The portal is open now! There are two ways to access the scheme.

The online scheme

To use the online scheme, you must:

• Sign up through the Government Gateway on behalf of the business for VAT services before 21 June 2021 and pay the first VAT instalment upon signing up. You should ensure that you have access to the government gateway and have requested forgotten passwords etc in advance.
• Have an outstanding VAT balance relating to the VAT periods 31 March 2020 – 30 June 2020. HMRC do state that you will need to know how much is owed prior to signing up.
• Be up to date with submission of all VAT returns
• Pay the instalments by Direct Debit (if you don’t use Direct Debit, you can still pay in instalments but it needs to be sorted on the telephone)

The telephone scheme

In some cases, some businesses may not be able to sign up online.  If this is the case, you should ring the COVID-19 helpline after the scheme opens on 23 February (0800 024 1222) and an advisor will assist you. The number of instalments available to you will depend upon when you join the scheme:

  You can opt to pay across fewer instalments if preferable. Businesses have until 21 June 2021 to join the scheme.  If you require any assistance, please contact us.  We are unable to carry out this process for you, but one of our team will be able to guide you through the process.