Very basic tax return question... apologies in advance

d712

Sorry if this sounds like a daft question...

When you fill in a tax return, what expenses/outgoings should be included?

Do you only list expenses/outgoings that directly relate to your self-employed earnings or can other things be included?

If so, what else can go in?

Thanks and sorry if that was a stupid question!

MrCarrot

Yes, only expenses which relate to your business. Obvious things are as follows:

Office rental
Office utilities
Mobiles or dedicated phone lines
Business mileage (you must keep a mileage log)
Postage
Stationary
Printer cartridges

Anything else you genuinely purchase for your business can be included. However there are some exceptions:

Lunch
Food
Client entertainment
IT equipment (I think you can only claim the depreciation of this over several years)

If you work from home you can claim £3 a week. It's also possible to claim for mortgage interest and council tax, but it becomes a lot more complicated and you have to do calculations showing how much floor space your home office takes up, how often you are using it, etc.

PlutoinCapricorn

If your profit from self employment is under £15,000, there is no need to actually list your business expenses, just give the total. You do need to have receipts and statements to back up your figures in case of an investigation.

If you give more information about what you do, where you do it and an idea of the profit amount, you might better answers.

The expenses can include both items and running costs. What have you bought that you would never have bought for personal use? If you do a lot of work at home, how much of the total space is taken up by your office? You may need to calculate percentages for personal/business use.

Capital items are something else.

fengirl_2

if you are keeping a proper record of all yur business outgoings as you go along, it should be easier to produde your year end acounts to enter on your return. Only expenditure incurred whooy and exclusively for the business can be included, so I am not sure what 'other' expenses you think you could include.

d712

There weren't any specific things I thought could be included. I didn't really think there would be.
I just wanted to be sure there was no risk of me submitting a tax return and then finding out when it was too late that something else could have also been included.

Thanks for the responses