Registering As A Sole Trader

wayne1981 · 9 October 2016 at 7:22AM

Morning all.

Before I start, I know ignorance is not an excuse.

I started selling a few bits online, just casual. Anyway, over the last few months my little hobby has started to snowball, and sales have grown really quickly. I stumbled upon something online which said if you buy to sell on, then no matter how little money you make you should register as a Sole Trader with HMRC.

This got my alarm bells ringing as I havent, so this weekend im registering as a Sole Trader (I do already have a full time job). I have spent some time looking through the HMRC web site, and the part that im worried about is the end of year records that need to be declared. As what I was doing was just a bit of casual penny making to start with, I have no real records of what I have done. What I dont want to do is submit my form and for it to be wrong, and then get in trouble. It all started as a bit of fun, and is becoming all very serious now.

What advise can people give? Ive bought some things online, some things in cash. Ive sold some things online, some in cash. Ive just had a look trough my bank statements and some purchases (to sell on) I can see easily, some would be mixed in with other purchases (where we have been out shopping etc). I can print my statement out and start to list bits that I can see I have purchased to sell and list them, but what they have sold for months ago im not always sure. I can get some sales from my eBay records/PayPal records etc. My concern mainly are the little "black holes" that il have where ive picked something up and paid in cash, or someone local has bought from me and not paid online (as I havent recorded it). I have now started to log all of my purchases/sales on a spread sheet so that I can see what is going on.

Im just feeling all very confused. Im actually training to be a Teacher, so I dont want to do anything that could jepordize that.

Any advise on how I can start to establish the previous history so that I can get something that I can submit would be greatly appreciated, as my head is hurting from this :rotfl:

Ive then seen that you can then claim things back, which has confused me even more! Ive spent time looking online. I suppose I do still have a few months to get this sorted, but I do not want to be accused of anything that was not intentional. Ive always been employed by a company, so this is all new to me.

Any advise (no matter how little), would be greatly appreciated.

Wayne

Pennywise · 9 October 2016 at 11:00AM

wayne1981 wrote: »

Any advise on how I can start to establish the previous history so that I can get something that I can submit would be greatly appreciated

You've already answered your own question. You need to get all the evidence you can, i.e. paypal/ebay reports, bank statements, etc and lay out what you know. You will then have to make the best guess to fill in the gaps. I.e. the records may show you sold product y, but you have no record of buying it, so you'll just have to make your best guess at how much you paid for it. Just make sure your spreadsheet is clear as to the "source" of each bit of evidence to all for it to be reviewed by a tax inspector if asked for.

Your spreadsheet needs to show dates of purchase & sale of each item, how much, costs of selling (i.e. ebay/paypal fees), postage costs (estimated if necessary), whether each transaction was cash, bank, paypal, etc, and a brief description of the item.

Re expenses, just make records of what you know for the time being, i.e. postage, ebay/paypal fees, and anything else business specific that is obvious from your bank statements etc. Once you've got that you can then research etc for anything else claimable, but the first thing is to get the records of buying/selling as accurate as possible.

wayne1981 · 9 October 2016 at 2:32PM

Thanks for that. Everything is now detailed to the finest degree, so il get my statements printed and just start jigsawing everything together.

Best start going through it all, lol...

wayne1981 · 9 October 2016 at 4:46PM

Ive just completed my registration now (I think), the HMRC is far from user friendly!

Will I get fined because the "business" started more than 3 months ago?

wildthingsUK · 27 June 2017 at 5:54PM

Hi Wayne, I am now in exactly the same position as you were a few months ago! How did it go? Did you manage to claim for expenses that you didn't have receipts for? How was the self-assessment process?
Thank you,
Hollie

Registering As A Sole Trader

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