Sole trader training course

Strapped

Hi, I'm a self-employed sole trader. I sell online (through eBay mainly at the moment). I plan to develop my own website to sell through. My question for any tax experts on this board is whether I would be able to claim the course fees for a web design course as revenue expenditure?

I'm aware of the refresher-vs-new-knowledge / revenue-vs-capital expenditure issue, but I would argue that as I already trade online, and the course is to enable me to continue to trade online (without being solely dependent on eBay) that it would be an extension/update to what I already do?

Thoughts please?

If it makes a difference, I have a previous background in software development, and am planning on a relatively short/inexpensive course on the relevant software to construct a simple website.

Pennywise

I'd say that a specific relatively short course to teach you a particular piece of software would be allowable if it's relevant for your trade, which a website would be.

If, however, you were undertaking an academic course on say website creation generally leading to a personal qualification such as a diploma type of thing, then probably not allowable.

But it is a can of worms and tax inspectors do vary as to their interpretation of the legislation.

bangersnmash

Perhaps consider these and maybe use them to get some practice and so as to get a frame of reference and some experience in order to then be able to better evaluate other services and to identify what you might need to try to find out from a course before you do one :

paypal have a free shopping cart which may suit your purposes

atspace offer free space

1and1 offer ecommerce free for the first six months and cheap domain names .com £6.49 a year .co.uk £2.49 first year

for free domains consider .co.nr .co.tk and there's also a few more.

SEO search engine optimisation to get your site coming up at the top or in the top 10 via google searches is another aspect to read up about on various websites that explain it. Lots of techniques explained and beginners' mistakes to be avoided explained.

You can probably learn a lot or even everything you need to know by doing it yourself and by reading help pages, faqs and forums about as readily as you can from a paid course. Probably.

Hope this is of use.