VAT Reinstatement

I cancelled our VAT number by mistake, we have a second company that is now dormant and I wanted that company's vat number deregistered. As soon as I realised that I had deregistered the VAT number of our trading company I contacted the VAT office to explain my mistake and explained that it was imperative that we retain our current VAT number. We sell to local councils and it takes many weeks to establish accounts with them and means we currently cannot issue any sales invoices ...because we have not heard from the VAT office. This will now lead to redundancies. Deregistration was 1st November. Phone calls, letters and escalation have not had the VAT office inform us of their decision. 1. Why have we not been informed that our VAT number could or could not be reinstated This has to be a simple decision. If we were told, even as late as January 2024, we could have re-registered reducing the delay in recommencing sales. 2. Escalating this has not provoked HMRC to answer, we still do not have a decision. This a very stressful time for us, our Business is paused waiting for a communication from HMRC Where do we go to get this resolved....the Daily Mail perhaps

Have you called the deregistration and reinstatement team on 0300 322 7871? (rather than the general VAT helpline). Is your government gateway showing as still being VAT registered or does it show as now deregistered/VAT number cancelled? Did you cancel your registration via your gateway or did you write to HMRC (hardcopy letter in the post)? I'm a tax agent (Accountant) and I agree this is frustrating and this is not a complicated error to resolve, it should not take months of frustration and the general VAT helpline should have been able to resolve this. Issue may be that HMRC are almost never happy to receive requests like this (reinstatement of VAT number, changing bank details, etc) over the telephone, even after passing security checks, this sort of thing probably warrants something in writing, but you should have been advised to do that when you first called to raise the problem. HMRC Admin, is there a way to get this resolved for the taxpayer?

Thanks Jason, I appreciate your comments 1. The gateway still shows the Company as VAT deregistered 2. I cancelled via the gateway.. I made a mistake and should have accessed the Company I wanted to deregister. The reason I didn't pick up on this immediately was because the Company we wanted to deregister was in effect deregistered early December 2023. 3. A complication appears that although I am the person of significant control through owning 100% of the equity and appoint the directors I had in fact resigned as a director early in 2023 (semi retired).My wife is now the sole director After escalation to processingcomplaintsteam@hmrc.gov.uk On the 2nd February I received a letter stating that my request could not be processed as I had resigned as a Director. (sent some 2 months after my initial request) I immediately sent a letter with the same request from my wife the sole director . Lesson learnt even though I had passed all security questions over at least 10 calls and was able to register and deregister the Business in the first place and am the only person that can access the government web site. I was informed only a director can apply for reinstatement. Originally this was a simple mistake (Should it be that easy to deregister ?) should there not be a simple way to reverse this if done my mistake and should this reversal not have been effected after one of the many phone calls I have made.

Hi Ron Jones,
We are sorry you have had to go through this.
The query is specific to your business so we would be unable to comment on what has occurred but the priority is now to contact the Helpline so that we can progress this reinstatement and reach out to this Department to find out what is happenning.
Please contact us on 03002003700.
VAT: general enquiries.
Thank you.