Readers’ forum: Desperately trying to comply

My client is a trainee criminal barrister. He registered for VAT in early 2022 received a registration number with a commencement date of 6 April 2022 wanting to submit a return to 31 March 2023 and annually thereafter. He has paid three instalments of VAT during 2022-23. I have finalised all the figures for his return and yet his online VAT account is showing no returns as due. He paid the VAT I calculated is due: not a lot but he wants to be compliant.

I have made endless attempts to sort matters out. Calls first to the general VAT helpline and then in recent months regular calls to the annual accounting team. A couple of months ago I was told that a migration fault had occurred on the move of his records and that the matter would be passed to ‘technical’....