Builders & VAT

[Octisme]

Builder set up a payment plan for a job he's doing & payments are made as requested. A final payment is left to be paid upon completion & to cover any snagging. Builder was not VAT registered at time of quote. Now requesting more money before job is completed even though there is just the final payment outstanding as in the original plan provided. Also now saying he wants to send invoice for VAT. Job was meant to take 3 months & we have now just gone over 1 year and still not complete! He has been absent from the job for periods of 2 months at a time at various stages. Anyone know where we stand re the sudden addition of VAT & timescale?

We had similar with a tradesman. He went over the threshold while working on our job and had to start charging VAT from then on. He tried to tell us we needed to pay 20% extra. We politely told him we'd pay him what he quoted for the job - he'd have to pay VAT out of that. It's their problem - once they get close to the boundary they should be quoting with VAT. As a customer we had accepted a quote and didn't need to suddenly pay extra.