Overseas VAT registration - HMRC issued VAT number in owners personal name not company

I'm a tax agent. Have submitted four VAT registrations recently for companies, all have had VAT numbers issued but in the name of the person (treated as a sole trader), not the company. I can't change the legal status via the online gateway, the VAT number has been incorrectly issued by HMRC because the applications were made as companies, not as sole traders. HMRC has an obligation to correct their errors. HMRC know of this technical issue. How do I change the VAT status from sole trader to corporate/company? I can't send a VAT484 as HMRC no longer accepting them, and I can't amend via gateway as it only lets me change trading name. I've emailed vrs.newregistrations@hmrc.gov.uk and btc.changeoflegalentity@hmrc.gov.uk and vatchangeofcircs@hmrc.gov.uk and not had a reply from any of these, it has been more than two weeks and none of the clients can import goods because the VAT number/EORI is in the wrong name. Can you advise on which team to contact to get these errors corrected? Thank you.

Hi.
I'm sorry that this has happened to 4 of your clients.
Please call our Helpline on 03002003700 and we can submit an urgent referal over to our change of legal entity team to resolve this.

Thanks HMRC Admin 10, have contacted helpline and actioned.

Feedback .

Have contacted helpline, they took all the details of the businesses and a week later, nothing has changed, taxpayers still showing as sole traders, still can't import goods into the UK, still no replies from any of my emails to VAT registrations, change of circumstances team or change of entity team, presumably nobody is opening emails in any of these inboxes. Any other suggestions as to how to correct the errors made by HMRC?

Hi Jay,
Apologies that this is taking so long to resolve.
However if you have contacted our Helpline then the advisor would have taken the details and referred this over to the Department responsible for resolving this issue.
We understand that this is an urgent issue so we would advise you contact the Helpline again here:
VAT: general enquiries
To get a progress reposrt on this.
Thank you. 
 

HMRC have replied to me and accepted it is a known error but their solution is not a solution either for the present situation or all future VAT registrations. The solution is for me to call the VAT helpline (30+ mins), request paper VAT1 forms (10 days in the post), then to submit entirely new VAT registrations using the paper forms which will need the taxpayer to wet sign which involves sending documents international recorded delivery (another 10-20 days), post the VAT 1 to HMRC for manual processing. I also have to get the taxpayer to sign a VAT68 "transfer of a VAT number" (and we know that team takes around 1-3 months to process) and in addition, I also have to send a document which states the VAT registration was issued in the wrong name, signed by the taxpayer and so the client will think I've made a mistake. I have to do this for the 4 clients HMRC have made this error on, I can't bill my client for the extra hours it will take, my client cannot import anything whilst waiting for all these forms to be processed manually by HMRC. Is there not a more logical solution, like HMRC accepting their error and pressing a button to change registration from sole trader to corporate entity? Usually when someone makes an error, it is for them to correct, but here HMRC are wanting me to invest hours to correct their error? Can HMRC Admin escalate this and get someone to contact me with a better solution please because "redo everything you've done but using paper forms" isn't a solution.

Hi. I do apologise for the errors we have made in regards to registering you clients for VAT. Obviously we do need to have the correct legal entity for each of these clients. From your statement I can ascertain that the Change of Legal Entity Team have decided that we need you to send in these forms for your clients to enable us to have the correct details going forward. If that is their decision then this must be the only procedure for that team to follw and resolve the issue. This is a general forum and so unfortunately I can not reach out to the Change of Legal Enity Team to contact you regarding this. Thank you .

 

Hi Jay, Can you please update me about the solution? I am in the same situation and don't know what to do.