More Sunshine

[tamaranth]

The plot thickens ... I posted a message on the residents' forum of Down Our Way (what do you mean, your street hasn't got its own website? How ... retro.<g>) One of the regulars says that the company aren't VAT-registered: "I checked with Customs and Excise last year, and they have NOT heard of [evil feudal overlord] - No such registration for VAT exists for them."

Can I check this? How?

Thanks to everyone for sympathies, addresses etc ... it would be easy enough to register a different address (well, not that easy but can be done) but I suspect I'd still have to pay out for retrospective sins: so may as well avoid the bureaucracy (and admin fees) of changing address as well.

Comments

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Can I check this?

I think I can look it up on a work database. Do you have a name / claimed VAT reg number?

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Thank you!
Will email you company name (but will then be offline until late tonight -- any startling revelations could be texted, though!)

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Ok, my VAT guy said pretty mucht he same thing as HMCE did:

It’s difficult to find out if a company is VAT registered. There's a load of missing trader fraud going on at present whereby frausters "steal" a VAT registered businesses' details and charge VAT on a supply then disappear with the VAT they charge. It costs the Treasury something like £3 billion last year. So, Customs won't give out any details. You can only check an existing VAT number against an address etc, not the other way around.

So I'm afraid that they only info I have is the stuff that was in the email I sent. Sorry.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

thanks for this!

I did mail to thank you, too, but myemail doesn't like you. It said so.
217.146.107.46 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 On this port we require authentication
Giving up on 217.146.107.46.

Stupid email! Will resend, somehow.

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Mike has just done something very complicated and said "it seems to work". Try sending to flick at zz9.org?

[incy.livejournal.com]

if they do not charge vat they do not have to be registered. Check your bill, if they do you can obivously be ectremely annoying at this point. They must be registered with companies house
( http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/ ) and pay normal company taxes.

And Ok my street does not have is own web site, but the neighbourhood does if that counts ( http://www.hgs.org.uk )

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

The good thing about Companies House is that it's free to look up the trading status of a company (which includes previous trading names). It's only chargeable if you want to start looking at things like accounts.

Even if my street did have a website, I wouldn't be interested. This is, after all, a suburban street in Bromley. Full of middle-class pretension, strict codes of conduct (the state of my lawn is notorious...), all of which I ignore!