- Original Poster
- #1
Up until a few months ago my world seemed to be wine and roses.
My wife and I ran a consultancy, first with my own ltd company before joining her at her company as a director in September 2015, she did accounts, returns, VAT etc. (including my own) and I was a commercial advisor in the construction industry.
So in short she ran the accounts side of the business whilst I worked in the city.
Unfortunately this came to a shuddering halt about 7 weeks ago when she dies of an undiagnosed heart condition at the age of 48.
After a grieving period I decided to take the bull by the horns and seek advice of an accountant to look at the books (up until this point I have never looked at our accounts). It seems however that she has been taking unauthorised director's loans from the account ( she would have probably paid this back at year end with the 20 or so a year ends she filed) and on his advice it is unlikely that we would be able to meet out obligation to HMRC and the VAT,currently in the region of £20K by the end of the next tax year.
I have never received a payment remittance as she always did my books and returns and I was just given a company debit/credit card and told to put everything on it and she would sort it out, so I have also never even had my own bank account (now remedied a week ago).
Just to keep afloat I have been putting money from me liquidating some shares into the business account to pay for things like the funeral and living expenses as I had no bank account of my own.
I have been advised by my new accountant to throw myself on the mercy of HMRC to make the business insolvent but I am worried the recent activity will look suspicious. There is 3k of my money in the account ( what do I do with this ?), I cannot afford to be made bankrupt.
This is a massive mess, I know I should have taken more interest in the accounts, but along with mourning her death I am close to breaking point.
My wife and I ran a consultancy, first with my own ltd company before joining her at her company as a director in September 2015, she did accounts, returns, VAT etc. (including my own) and I was a commercial advisor in the construction industry.
So in short she ran the accounts side of the business whilst I worked in the city.
Unfortunately this came to a shuddering halt about 7 weeks ago when she dies of an undiagnosed heart condition at the age of 48.
After a grieving period I decided to take the bull by the horns and seek advice of an accountant to look at the books (up until this point I have never looked at our accounts). It seems however that she has been taking unauthorised director's loans from the account ( she would have probably paid this back at year end with the 20 or so a year ends she filed) and on his advice it is unlikely that we would be able to meet out obligation to HMRC and the VAT,currently in the region of £20K by the end of the next tax year.
I have never received a payment remittance as she always did my books and returns and I was just given a company debit/credit card and told to put everything on it and she would sort it out, so I have also never even had my own bank account (now remedied a week ago).
Just to keep afloat I have been putting money from me liquidating some shares into the business account to pay for things like the funeral and living expenses as I had no bank account of my own.
I have been advised by my new accountant to throw myself on the mercy of HMRC to make the business insolvent but I am worried the recent activity will look suspicious. There is 3k of my money in the account ( what do I do with this ?), I cannot afford to be made bankrupt.
This is a massive mess, I know I should have taken more interest in the accounts, but along with mourning her death I am close to breaking point.
