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Buying another company, but will take us over the VAT threshold
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LostPenguin67
- Posts:1
- Joined:Fri Aug 04, 2017 3:04 pm
Looking for some advice about VAT. I have a hair & beauty salon, and am interested in expanding the company, and buying a beauty salon else where in the country. We are a limited company, and have been offered finance to purchase the second shop based on the existing company; however the finance want both companies to operate under the the existing salon. This would put turn over at circa £130000 which would exceed the VAT threshold. Is there any way of structuring the company to still have the loan, but to avoid becoming VAT registered?
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spidersong
- Posts:352
- Joined:Wed Aug 06, 2008 4:05 pm
Re: Buying another company, but will take us over the VAT threshold
Without knowing the finance company's precise requirements (e.g. seeing offers/letters etc.) it wouldn't be possible for anyone on a forum to be definitive, but the main thing is that VAT legislation looks at the turnover of an entity.
So if you have a single limited company then you have a single turnover for VAT purposes, also HMRC have avoidance legislation that prevents things that are essentially a single business operating as two entities purely to avoid registration. With the anti avoidance you'd have to make sure that the companies were truly independent e.g. not sharing staff, wholesaler accounts, telephone numbers, bank accounts etc. but it's not unreasonable for shareholders/businesses to minimise risk by keeping new ventures separate from existing businesses so with care you can avoid that problem, but your main problem seems to be the finance company rather than VAT itself.
You could explore the original company holding shares in the new company, rather than you holding the shares, so that it's a subsidiary and seeing if there's any way that the finance company would go for that rather than them being sister companies with the same shareholders/directors. Other than that and being separate companies, then I'm afraid your VAT situation is actually a fairly straightforward choice - same entity you become registered, different entities then with care you can avoid it, and it's as simple as that, I'm afraid there's no way to run two businesses within one entity without their turnover being combined for VAT registration purposes.
So if you have a single limited company then you have a single turnover for VAT purposes, also HMRC have avoidance legislation that prevents things that are essentially a single business operating as two entities purely to avoid registration. With the anti avoidance you'd have to make sure that the companies were truly independent e.g. not sharing staff, wholesaler accounts, telephone numbers, bank accounts etc. but it's not unreasonable for shareholders/businesses to minimise risk by keeping new ventures separate from existing businesses so with care you can avoid that problem, but your main problem seems to be the finance company rather than VAT itself.
You could explore the original company holding shares in the new company, rather than you holding the shares, so that it's a subsidiary and seeing if there's any way that the finance company would go for that rather than them being sister companies with the same shareholders/directors. Other than that and being separate companies, then I'm afraid your VAT situation is actually a fairly straightforward choice - same entity you become registered, different entities then with care you can avoid it, and it's as simple as that, I'm afraid there's no way to run two businesses within one entity without their turnover being combined for VAT registration purposes.
