Help With Housing Benefit SE1 Form Please

UnderPressure

Morning all

My sister in law has recently started her own small cleaning business, she has updated the housing benefit people with this new information and they suspended her claim and asked her to fill out an SE1 form so they could reassess her entitlement, she asked me to giver her a hand to fill it out and I have to admit I could do with some help from you kind people

The form is quite simple and straight forward, the housing benefit team have asked her for projected figures for the next 3 months, we have had no problem at all with the expenses side but how the heck are we to provide a figure for income? We have no idea how her advertising is going to go, have no clue if anyone will ring from her leaflet drops, not a clue if Adwords is going to yield any new clients I really do not understand what they expect her to do, can anyone give me some guidance please? We do not want to over estimate and then everything be a financial struggle and we do not want to under estimate then end up with her owing them money back, I really want to giver her the right advice but am stumped at what they expect, the first 3 months will probably only be around break even anyway as with any new business there is a lot to spend to begin with, she may not even break even we just do not know.

Thanks in advance

pinkypoopydoo

If she has recently started, then the prudent thing for her to have done would have been to have done a projected cash flow for the first year (two preferably) showing expected earnings. Projections are a bit like grasping figures out the air, but if a business has been thought through, then a certain level of research will have been done, so she should have a basic idea of how much business she expects to get.

I went self employed a couple of months ago, and as well as detailed business plan, that included market research into competitors and the expected levels of clients, I had to produce two full years of cash projections. I gave them to the council tax office when I reapplied for CTR and had to complete a self employment form.

UnderPressure

A couple of other questions as well, she will be doing all the office side of the work from home should she put anything on the form under the heating and lighting section? Also the special clothes section could she enter the cost here for logo printed t-shirts?

Finally car expenses, we do not think it right to be trying to claim any expenses toward insurance, tax mot etc as it is her personaly car and these would have to be paid anyway, however there will be a huge leap in her petrol bill from the beginning she has been leafleting in different areas around the county, visiting other business's such as holiday let agencies and estate agents, going to give quotes etc etc, we estimate very conservatively her petrol costs to be around £100 per month, probably more but until she has been trading for a few months it is going to be impossible to tell, should she just enter this figure in the petrol setion? Even though she is not claiming anything for insurance etc?

Thanks

pinkypoopydoo

There is a good guide to claiming expenses like car and home expenses on the HMRC site. I'll get the link..

pinkypoopydoo

https://www.gov.uk/simpler-income-tax-simplified-expenses

UnderPressure

pinkypoopydoo wrote: »

If she has recently started, then the prudent thing for her to have done would have been to have done a projected cash flow for the first year (two preferably) showing expected earnings. Projections are a bit like grasping figures out the air, but if a business has been thought through, then a certain level of research will have been done, so she should have a basic idea of how much business she expects to get.

I went self employed a couple of months ago, and as well as detailed business plan, that included market research into competitors and the expected levels of clients, I had to produce two full years of cash projections. I gave them to the council tax office when I reapplied for CTR and had to complete a self employment form.

Hello, thanks for your reply, it is a bit difficult in the area she is in because around 70% of her business "should be" seasonal, summer seasonal which now is well under way, she may get lucky and find 20 clients with holiday lets then she might be completely unlucky and only get 2 or 3. She has a solid marketing plan in place for the next 12 months so we can predict next years figures a lot easier than we can predict this years, "if" her research is correct then next year she will not qualify for any help which will be great.

The biggest problem is the winter season as this will rely upon commercial contracts and also residential cleans, as you said it feels as though we are just plucking the figures out of thin air that is what has us both a little uncomfortable. We will have to go of her original projections in her business plan, they to me are a little over enthusiastic but then I suppose this is better for this purpose, I suppose over the weeks if there looks like there is going to be a significant difference she can always revise the figures and re submit them to housing benefit.

UnderPressure

pinkypoopydoo wrote: »

There is a good guide to claiming expenses like car and home expenses on the HMRC site. I'll get the link..

Thanks for that link, I did read through that this morning but found when searching the forum that housing benefits idea of expenses are different to HMRC although it seems impossible to actually figure out what housing benefits idea of expenses is

bloolagoon

Has she informed her landlord she will be using the house to run a business, some don't mind but others do.

If its likely to be zero for the first 3 months then surely that is what you declare, just ensure that on a week by week basis you put away money if they go over the minimum law live on amount just in case.

UnderPressure

We have just worked it out using her projected figures in her business plan and it will work out as a loss of £34, in the second quarter this goes to being a profit of £1321, as said though it is all if's and hopefully's, these really though are the only figures we can give them, in her business plan projections she under estimated her first 3 months costs by around 67%, as said before income seems a bit "enthusiastic" to me but either way she will not be generating an over payment so that's good.

As said if these income figures look like they are going to change she can always re-submit revised figure to them.


EDITED loss from £99 to £34 cannot read my own writing!

Dunroamin

UnderPressure wrote: »

A couple of other questions as well, she will be doing all the office side of the work from home should she put anything on the form under the heating and lighting section? Also the special clothes section could she enter the cost here for logo printed t-shirts?

Finally car expenses, we do not think it right to be trying to claim any expenses toward insurance, tax mot etc as it is her personaly car and these would have to be paid anyway, however there will be a huge leap in her petrol bill from the beginning she has been leafleting in different areas around the county, visiting other business's such as holiday let agencies and estate agents, going to give quotes etc etc, we estimate very conservatively her petrol costs to be around £100 per month, probably more but until she has been trading for a few months it is going to be impossible to tell, should she just enter this figure in the petrol setion? Even though she is not claiming anything for insurance etc?

Thanks

She really must change her car insurance from leisure use to business use if she's using it in this way.

UnderPressure

Dunroamin wrote: »

She really must change her car insurance from leisure use to business use if she's using it in this way.

Thanks for the reply, she is onto this as we speak but as she will be using it on a personal basis as well thinks it is unfair for the moment to try and claim it back as an expense, her long term plan is to buy a nice van that will be owned by the business and run through the books but in these early days using her car she thinks it better to jus pay for the insurance herself.

I do not know if this is right or wrong but if we add the cost of the insurance and tax etc it will result in an even bigger loss for the 1st quarter, she does not like the idea of a loss I have explained that it is quite normal for any business in the first 12 months to lose money but to her credit I suppose she does not like the idea and rightly wants it in profit asap.