SA return help

feygan

Filling in my first SA return and I knew it would cause me some issues due to circumstances but hoping for some help.

Prior to 17 December 2012 I was unemployed and in receipt of jsa and housing benefit. During December of that year I began a steps to work self employed program, this involved me working a test trading period of 26 weeks. During that period I would still receive my jsa and housing but receive an addition £15 per week new deal payment. Finally any profits from the business were locked in a business account available to use only for business expenses until the end of the test trading period. As part of the program I was required to register for self assessment from the very start of the program.

My problem comes from a letter about the new deal payments. So far my tax return obviously only has my jsa payments made to me from April 2012 to 16 December 2012, which was all standard taxable income. After this I will directly quote the letter for ease.

From 17 December 2012 to 5 June 2013 we will pay you £81.03 each week. This is £65.55 allowance plus a grant of £15.38 plus £0.10 income-bases jobseeker's allowance.

Your money will be paid every two weeks. These allowances are not taxable. You will get credits of National Insurance contributions.

Now my first thought was to simply leave all income from 17 December to 5 April 2013 off the return form, however I wondered if this would either look suspicious or leave me with a shortfall of contributions etc. I have tried contacting the job center about this issue and they have been less than useless informing me that they do not deal with self assessment tax issues and offering me no further line of enquiry

Should I play it safe and just include these payments as part of my jsa section or some other benefit? Or should I leave them out altogether?

Also I am in limbo somewhat on my employment status for that period. In the eyes of the job center I was still technically unemployed and effectively on a work experience scheme. However the business did make profit during the Dec-Apr period, even though this was not taken by me as any form of salary do I need to include those figures? If so how can I state I was both unemployed and self employed at the same time?

I have tried asking the HMRC help desk about this but they hadn't even heard of the program so could offer no advice. Thanks in advance for any help offered.