12000 vat problems

i was with accountant who i trusted was doing my accounts and vat properly , then this year i found out despite being paid in full for doing my accounts , he never submitted them for the last financial year and for last 2 years he deregistered me for vat. so i was fairly pissed off and had it out with him , he threw me out of his office and started sending me solicitor saying i owed him money for doing these accounts , when i have him a standing order , wtf?
so new accountant has had to redo my accounts for last 2 years to get them to marry up , as old accountant refused to give a professional clearance , and also register me for vat , today i got hit with a 12000 vat bill for two years .
i feel like going out buying a new van today at least i could claim back 4500 this year , any ideas how to ease this pain, i have very little expenses for vat . any ideas that are all above board as i know i am going to be audited .
thanks for any info

Your accountant "Deregistered you for VAT" and did not tell you? Were you charging your customers VAT? Did you not notice that you stopped paying VAT?

Seems like a strange situation.

yes he deregistered me without me knowing it or telling me in feb 2013 . i rang revenue and they told me who did it. i do my vat every 12 months , i am barely over the 37500 limit , so i have to do vat , i spent the following year trying to get my stuff off him and sort out my vat but he wouldnt cooperate with new accountant , who was reluctant to do my accounts without professional clearance . so that where roughly 2 years will be coming from , by year end.
my head is spinning so i probably didnt explain my story fully and properly . a case for carb i think . i will have to pay it end of as they say

How did he manage to deregister you without a Form TRCN1 which you would have needed to sign?

If you were charging VAT to customers, you should have been remitting that VAT to Revenue as you were going along. Regardless of whether or not you were VAT registered. Plenty of people log into ROS and find there is something amiss with a tax registration. Its usually easily fixed by a phone call to Revenue, but not if returns and payments are left to fester for 2 years.

Note that if you were barely over the €37,500 turnover limit, you may well still be exempt as "For the purposes only of deciding if a person is obliged to register for VAT, the actual turnover may be reduced by an amount equivalent to the VAT borne on purchases of stock for re-sale."

http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/vat/guide/registration.html

At least if you can afford to spend €24k on a new van, you can afford to pay half that in VAT.