For over 20 years Eros Consultants have played a leading role in The Optical Sector
The Vision Sector
- Community eyecare from individual business (Sole Traders) through small groups to larger national companies.
- Vision Sector Suppliers, lens labs, frame wholesale and manufacturers, shop designers, IT suppliers and Instrument Companies.
All types of businesses in the Vision Sector whether close to the coal face in Primary Care or providing clinicians with products and services need to be aware of the same key business drivers:
- Understand your customers needs
- Focus on the products or services that bring in the greater profitability
- Understand your core business
- Look at how the business is viewed from the outside
- Streamline processes
- Involve and treat all members of staff as being important links in a successful business
- Link rewards to success and congratulate.
Eros Consultants are here to listen and advise and put in place a structure that you can use in the future to gauge success.
- Budgets and Forecasting
- Staff Training and Compliance
- Using PMS systems to grow the business
- Marketing and SEO
- Audit and Accountancy Advice with Sales Tax specialisms
- Profit sharing schemes and Processing Change.
Our Complimentary associates
- Eros Consultants work closely with HMRC and specialise in the confirmation and oversight of partial exemption, its compliance with de minimis rules and the correct calculation and implementation of a full cost apportionment percentage.
- We have strong connections with the press and can advise on public relations and strong marketing.
- The importance of financial advice in partially exempt businesses cannot be overstressed and we work closely with Competent Financial Establishments that can provide loan advice.
- We are more than happy to work alongside your bank or accountants to improve their understand of the sectors.
Message from a leading accountancy company:
Urgent Message to all Businesses that provide Partially Exempt Services.
Are you sure that your Partial Exemption process, treatment of De Minimis and your refunded Input Tax is being treated fairly in your accounting processes?
In recent years Eros has provided consultancy services to optical and audiology businesses as we have done since the early 2000’s.
In the early days much of our business involved putting in place systems allowing new start-ups or those just registering for VAT to account correctly for their sales tax which involved gaining a signed agreement with HMRC.
Our CEO and Principal Consultant Bob Hutchisnon was exceptionally well placed to provide this knowledge as he was the Chair of the Optical Joint Body which put in place an agreed full cost apportionment process and was the co-signatory of the Business Brief jointly published with HMRC, or Customs and Excise as it was known then.
He also steered the Optical Profession’s challenge at Judicial Review at the Royal Courts of Appeal to win the case against Government to gain a full 6 years repayment of overpaid VAT for the optical profession.
Nowadays, Eros is called in to both Audiology and Optical concerns who are at odds local HMRC officers or who have suspicions that their Full Cost Apportionment Percentages are unfair to the business or have been made aware by HMRC that they are not applying the de minimis rules correctly.
Many of these businesses have relied on their accountants especially since “Making Tax Digital (MTD)” came into force to calculate their returns often from Digital Book-keeping Systems that cannot deal with Partial exemption or checking de minimis.
In recent times clients we have assisted were unaware that they were accounting for partial exemption incorrectly having found out either by intervention from HMRC or by asking us to run an audit on their process.
In each case Eros Business Consulting has put in a system which is legally compliant either by assisting their accountants or working with the client allowing them to upload their returns themselves, leaving the accountants to deal with the basic company year-end accounts.
In every case we have, where required, improved the relationship with HMRC officers, given the business owner’s peace of mind and an increased a quarterly deduction on their VAT returns and where possible gained substantial refunds going back up to 4 years.
We are also proactive in assisting clients on equipment and shopfitting decisions reducing the risk of exceeding de minimis and losing refunded input tax on purchases.
Are you sure that your business is:
- correctly applying partial exemption rules,
- has the fair and correct full cost apportionment percentage on spectacle, contact lens and hearing aid sales
- is correctly applying on each return a de minimis check?
In our experience over the last few years this has never been the case as accountants very rarely deal with partial exemption issues in their main clientele.
Our own large Company Accountants are in agreement, and you can read from Kinnaird Hill and Associate’s chief accountant a warning to others on being complacent and that many accounting practices are deficient in Partial Exemption Knowledge and the required skill set should be left to those who wholly spend time of PE Businesses as we do.
“Partial exemption is an extremely complicated and specialist area that in my experience many accountants either ignore or simply get wrong. My firm has successfully used Eros Business Consulting many times with our clients as a specialist advisor.
The risks to businesses that do not successfully calculate their VAT for partial exemption are basically twofold:
- firstly the missing out of correct claims that can involve thousands of pound each year,
- and secondly making a mistake the other way and end up owing HMRC vat incorrectly claimed over many years.
I would encourage any business owner who does either personally or through an accountancy practice or should be dealing with Partial Exemption to have Eros Business Consulting check them out with an Audit.”
David Rees FCCA
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