Useless accountant wants payment for non-service

[Venka]

Hi,

Our previous accountant went bankrupt early this year so we had to go on a hunt for a new accountant to do our corporate tax return. We had a chartered accountant recommended, quick meeting with him and he seemed ok although he was a bit odd, guess I should have trusted my gut instinct.

It turns out he completely messed up our corporate tax return, only filing the CT600 form wihout the full members accounts as he for some reason thought the previous accountant filed those. The accounts got rejected which we only found out after receiving a letter from the Inland Revenue stating the return had been rejected.

Luckily we got an extension from the Inland Revenue and we found an excellent local accountant who sorted everything out very quickly.

The useless accountant now wants payment for filing the CT600 form even though I had to pay another accountant to re-do anything plus he caused an immense amount of stress.

Any idea what the legal situation is?

 

[E Storey]

Did you give the first accountant any opportunity to correct his work?

 

[Eagle]

Bit of a loose question there. You could withold payment? If he's a cowboy, he may not bother chasing it.

 

[E Storey]

Accounts can be and often are, rejected for a number of reasons, not least because of the wrong information supplied by the customer in the first instance, or maybe a relatively minor error.

 

[Venka]

After the accounts were rejected, we did contact useless accountant.

He told my business partner a complete different story which my business partner did not buy as he actually heard my previous conversations with accountant.

Accountant appeared very confused, not being able to understand why H&M did not accept the accounts initially so we thought it better to go elsewhere as it would take too much of our time to explain this to a chartered accountant.

He does not appear to be a cowboy, just very, very odd and extremely bad at communication for example he emailed business partner on the 21st to say accounts had been filed only to contact me on the 31st asking if he could file the accounts as he had not filed them and the deadline was that day.

 

[Williams lester]

Did the accountant give you a letter of engagement? If so, this should outline their complaints procedure....if not, then I doubt he is chartered!

 

[Venka]

We did receive a letter of engagement, the only mention of making a complaint is to contact the person directly. No mention of a procedure as such. This is a just a single man working on his own.


We seem to have been extremely unlucky to have one accountant go bankrupt and disappear into thin air and the other one to be not that great at his job.


Luckily our new accountant seems to be incredibly on the ball.

 

[E Storey]

In that case, particularly since you have at least some written (e-mail) evidence showing what appears to be a lack of understanding on the accountants part, you could attempt to withould payment on grounds that the work was unsatisfactory, you did give him an opportunity to rectify but did not then have any confidence in his being able to do so.

You should still pay for any preparatory work he did, as the second accountant probably made use of this work.

The first stage would be to write to him stating that you are not prepared to pay (either at all or part of the invoiced amount) because of these reasons.

If he accepts a zero or partial payment offer - great. If he does not accept it then you really need to consider if paying is simpler than defending a court action, which you have no guarantee of winning?

 

[Williams lester]

We did receive a letter of engagement, the only mention of making a complaint is to contact the person directly. No mention of a procedure as such. This is a just a single man working on his own.


We seem to have been extremely unlucky to have one accountant go bankrupt and disappear into thin air and the other one to be not that great at his job.


Luckily our new accountant seems to be incredibly on the ball.

If he is chartered, it matters not that he may be a sole trader, there would be a right of complaint to his professional body should he not be able to resolve it with you amicably.