Philip Nicosia

I think I have. - I started a small company in November 2007 in a bid to get myself a little more organised.

Starting and registering a new company is a simple exercise but it was a while before I was able to open a bank account believe it or not so in its first year there was very little trading.

Relating to this year I received 2 invoices from Bourner Bullock. The first one dated 25th May 2008 for £150 plus VAT (total £176.25) and related to the preparation of Form 42, 288a, and sundry correspondence regarding ID issues. Now I’ll be honest I don’t know what these forms are but it wasn’t a lot of money so I paid it.

The second bill dated 29th May 2009 was for £550 plus VAT (total £632.50) related to completion and submission of various forms in the connection with the establishment of the company, acting as a company secretary for the year ended 31st May 2009, completion of bank application forms and to chasing up the banks in order to successfully arrange for the opening of a company bank account and preparation and submission of Annual Return for approval. I thought this bill was expensive but at least I got the bank account open so I paid it.

Now this is where I have a big issue with Bourner Bullock. I submitted my accounts to them on 22nd July 2009 by email. In the whole year of trading there was only 10 transactions with a turnover of £5439.00 which fitted on 1 piece of A4 paper.

On the 15th September 2009 they sent me an invoice for £1000.00 plus VAT (£1150.00). Yes you are reading that right, £1000.00 plus VAT for 10 transactions.

Because I am not VAT registered that worked out at £150 per transaction!

It took a few hours for this to sink in as I seriously couldn’t believe it was for so much. The breakdown of the bill was:

Preparation of the company’s financial statements for the period ended 30th November 2008 - £500.00

Preparation of Corporation Tax computation and form CT600 for submission to HM Revenue & Customs - £500.00

On calling them to explain to me why it was so much I was told that the amount of transactions were irrelevant as it was the time it took to setup the company on their system that cost the money and a total of 9 hours was spent working on my accounts according to their time sheets. In addition to this the accounts were supposedly then checked by a Manager and a Partner.

I was also told that because the trading period was over 1 year, 21st November 2007 to 31st November 2008, 2 CT600 forms had to be filled in and they believed £250.00 per form was not an unreasonable amount of money. Now I don’t know what is involved in filling out a CT600 form but bearing in mind one would be all zeros and company name and address, does this sound reasonable?

In the end they agreed to send me a credit note as a good will gesture of £250.00 plus VAT against the Preperation of Company Accounts part which reduced my bill down to £862.50 including VAT. (They believed £250 per CT600 form was fair and reasonable so couldn’t reduce that.)

So for my first years trading with a turnover of £5439.00, I am being charged £1671.25 by Bourner Bullock.

Now this is where the whole thing becomes completely laughable. According to my completed financial statements sent to me by Bourner Bullock I was due to pay £491.00 in corporation Tax. I then receive a letter from the Inland Revenue telling me that £529.67 was due. I also receive a letter from Bourner Bullock confirming they have checked the assessment and confirm that a liability of £529.67 is due now.

Not only have I been charged what I believe to be an extortionate amount of money for Bourner Bullocks services, it appears my accounts that I’m told were checked by a Manager and a Partner may not even be correct?

Now I have taken this up with Bourner Bullock but to date they haven’t replied to my concerns yet continue to chase me for payment of their invoice.

If you are considering using the services of Bourner Bullock who have offices in both London and Milton Keynes, my advice to you would be careful and make sure you know what you are getting yourself into.

Update

I’ve now had a coulple of responses from Bourner Bullock Accountants.

The first one was :

Should you wish to resolve the issue with your accounts you will need to take it up with your new Accountants.

The second:

I have now had a chance to look at the accounts and computations that you have questioned. The tax liability in the accounts is based on all the information to hand when preparing the accounts. Once the accounts are finalised a final review takes place and there may be minor adjustments that are required to the computations. These add backs are for amounts that have been charged to the company but are disallowable for tax purposes. If there is an adjustment any over or under provision is accounted for in the following years accounts when they are prepared. This is common practice with all companies.

In your case there was a small amendment to the add backs which altered the company’s liability by a small amount.

I trust the above answers your query. I cannot now see any reason why you should dispute the outstanding fees and must ask that you settle these by return. If you are unwilling to do this I will be left with no choice but to place the matter in the hands of solicitors.

Neither of these are particulary helpful. I find it hard to believe that it is good practice for an accountant to send me accounts for approval and signature based on different figures to what they are actually submitting elsewhere and not even telling me prior to that.

Then to tell me this is “common practice”. This does not strike me as being very professional. Bearing in mind how much money they are invoicing me for all this wouldn’t you at least expect a little care and attention to detail? Afterall these are highly paid “Professionals”. If you can’t trust them to get it right what’s the point in employing them?

I recently upgraded to an iPhone 3GS and one of the new features on it is the video camera. Playing around with it I decided to mount it to my Vespa GTS 300 to see how good the video was in comparison to the Action Cam I purchased a while ago.

Below are the results.

The results I don’t think are too bad. Unfortunately the windshield got in the way bit and the picture is a bit wavy in pieces but overall it’s quite good.

You can see the Aciton Cam video to compare here.

I’ve been tempted in the past to get some video glasses before but have always been put off by the screen format being so old hat on them 4:3. I’ve had widescreen TV’s and computer monitors for years so it seemed a step backwards. So when I saw the Vuzix iWear AV310 Widescreen Video Eyewear advertised just before Christmas I couldn’t resist the temptation to get them.

These are the first and to the best of my knowledge the only widescreen format video glasses available. Coupled with the fact that they would work with my iPhone 3G out of the box I was sold.

Sadly for me my ever cautious girlfriend refused to buy them for me insisting that they wouldn’t be any good, strain my eyes and that I would be complaining about them within 5 minutes and they’d be resigned to a drawer in their box for eternity. Luckily though my parents didn’t have the same reservations and agreed to get them for me for Christmas.

I’ll be honest and say I didn’t know what to expect and couldn’t really get my head around how they would work. I read that they were the equivalent to a 52″ screen viewed from 9 feet away but as these glasses are right in front of you I didn’t know if it would be difficult to focus on the picture.

Christmas day came and armed with my iPhone with a pre-installed movie on it I had it up and running in about 5 minutes. The iWear AV310 comes with many connectors including an iPhone/iPod connector that just plugs straight into the bottom of it.

I started the movie up and all I can say is wow! It really was like watching a 52 inch screen from 9 feet away. In fact your eyes focus to a point about 9 feet away even though the tiny screens are so close to your eyes and it felt totally natural. You can even get a sense of your surroundings as if you look slightly up or down you can see perfectly everything around you.

The picture and sound quality is quite good. Admittedly it is far from DVD or High Definition quality and I wouldn’t suggest getting one of these to replace your Plasma TV. The two lcd screens are 428 x 240 so blowing that up into such a large screen is going to have an effect on the quality but doesn’t diminish the overall experience.

After a while the iWear glasses were making the rounds around the room and even my ever cautious girlfriend conceded that they were good. Another useful feature on them is the independent +2 to -5 diopter focus adjustment on each screen so even my brother who tells me he is as blind as a bat without his glasses was able to use them and focus on the screen without his glasses.

As a portable unit they are great. I wanted these mainly for long flights and for watching movies lying on the beach but would imagine they’d be great for commuters too.

I got mine from Play.com but I’ve also seen them on Firebox too.

Anyone else find it strange that Verne didn’t win Celebrity Big Brother last night?

Watching it last night it was unbelievable when Davina announced that he came 4th. Judging by the reaction of the crowd they were all stunned too. Verne got the biggest chears and reception from the crowd out of all of them and the winner Ulrika even got a load of boos.

Was it fixed or was everyone so sure he was going to win that they didn’t bother voting for him?

In what must be the longest closing down sale in history, the legendary Golf Shop that was a thorn in Westminster Council’s side for so many years is closing down.

The Golf Sale London Golf Shop was responsible for all those board holders on Oxford Street and Regent Street and the inspiration for the Golf Sale T-shirts as worn by Big Brother’s Brian on the Channel 4 Reality TV Show.

So if you want to grab a real bargain with up to 75% off top brands and are in London soon then give the Golf Sale London Golf Shop a visit.