Hi. My wife and I have recently opened a village convenience store/ newsagents and I am after a bit of advice. It is the first time either of us have run our own business and been VAT registered. We just have an old till that basically just enters amounts in and I was a bit confused as to how I figure out what we owe in VAT as we have different rates on the items we sell, ie A rated ( zero) B rated ( 17.5%) and C rated ( 5%), without listing down every single item we sell and finding out its VAT rate. I am sure there must be a more simple way. I hope. Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Hi. My wife and I have recently opened a village convenience store/ newsagents and I am after a bit of advice. It is the first time either of us have run our own business and been VAT registered. We just have an old till that basically just enters amounts in and I was a bit confused as to how I figure out what we owe in VAT as we have different rates on the items we sell, ie A rated ( zero) B rated ( 17.5%) and C rated ( 5%), without listing down every single item we sell and finding out its VAT rate. I am sure there must be a more simple way. I hope. Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.
I know someone that had a newsagent for several years and I think what he used to do was take his purchases and work out what percentage there was at the various rates and then apply them to the turnover for the quarter. He then had to do an annual adjustment. This was quite a few years ago.
You'd be best going to HMRC website and see which retail scheme you should use.
You easiest option is to invest in a more modern till that will give you a print-out at the end of each day showing your VAT totals. They are many options available but often the easiest is one that has three button for the different rates eg. someone buys some papers/magazine: you enter the total and press button A (0% VAT).
This will mean you will have to become familiar with what product come under which VAT rate but after a few weeks you'll know.
