Self employment and Tax Credits

Swanseajack

My potential self employment to be involves a degree of artistic production. I have read the following on the Tax Credits guide and I could do with understanding what this actually means - can anybody help me please?

"If you are self-employed, you should tell us the taxable profit calculated in your Self Assessment tax return for 2009–10. However, if you are a farmer, market gardener or a creative artist, averaging relief for fluctuating profits is not allowed in tax credit claims"

I have no idea what this means, if anybody can throw some light on this I would be most grateful.

Cheers, Jack

MrsManda

I don't know much about Tax Credits but the TC600 notes may help
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/forms/tc600-notes.pdf

Swanseajack

Hi there, thanks for your help, however, the extract from the TC600 notes is as per below and makes no more sense to me!

If you use averaging because
you're a farmer, market gardener or
creator of literary or artistic works

You can't use averaging in your tax
credits claim. So you need to adjust
your total profits figure to take out

the averaging.

I do wish they would write this stuff in layman's terms...