When is the start date for self-employment

JohnCorite

Hi All,

If you started a door-to-door leaflet drop on 6th April 2011 (start of the new tax year) and then on the 7th started advertising online and then today (the 8th) got an actual job appointment (call out for your services) on the 9th (tomorrow); What is your legal start of self-employment date (when HMRC ask - when did your start?).

Would it be the 6th (because you were ready for business and therefore ready to accept business/paid work) or would it be tomorrow (because that is the first actual day of paid work)?

Regards

John

Horace

Your start date would be 6th April because this is when you started work - delivering leaflets is work promoting your business even if you earnt no money on that day.

Hammyman

It also simplifies doing tax returns to keep your accounting period the same as the normal tax year.

anamenottaken

Hammyman wrote: »

It also simplifies doing tax returns to keep your accounting period the same as the normal tax year.

Agreed that, for an individual self-employed taxpayer, alignment with the tax year makes sense.

For the OP the tax year would be the same whichever date had been used.

Also the accounting period doesn't have to be the exactly a year from the start point.