Self-employed and Working Tax Credits

Darksparkle

Hheyes wrote: »

Thanks.
Not being rude.. I'm aware of that and may do so.

My main reason for posting is to see if anyone else has has similar/relevant experience.

Sorry my psychic abilities aren't on at the moment.

Mersey_2

Hheyes wrote: »

Does anybody have useful experience and/or suggestions regarding claiming WTC when self-employed?

With a recent start-up, my activity is deemed as 'not qualifying - not commercial or profitable'.

After rejection, I requested a mandatory reconsideration, by the time of which I'd been trading a week-or-two and submitted evidence of about $2500 (dollars, because most of my activity is oriented toward the US and is received in my $ PayPal account).

I've now just received another refusal, advising that I didn't provide proof of activity for the pre-launch before I began receiving income.

Perhaps mistakenly, it seems to me that there's an element of whomever decides this either not being appropriately aware of s/emp activity, or deliberately ignoring it.

I'm tempted to just forget the whole thing, but income will be likely be unpredictable/irregular/low for some months and £55-or-so weekly will be very useful.

It's certainly worth appealing.

I helped a self-employed WTC claimant apply for WTC after receiving the same letter.

HMRC have admitted that a lot of these were sent out in error.

Indeed in the case I helped, they denied evidence had been received. Luckily he'd sent it via Recorded Delivery, so I simply advised that he quoted the relevant parts of the Tax Credits' qualification criteria and a copy of the proof of postage and they allowed his claim.

Detail your hours worked, including research, record keeping, attending meetings and so on.

It aids the fact that your business is regular and organised with a view to receiving payments.

Send copies of advertising, including via social media.

Send copies of proof of income, ie accounts to date, even if this only includes receipts for £ paid into your account.

Send a list of customers together with their addresses.


As well as an income & expenditure forecast.

Hheyes

Mersey wrote: »

It's certainly worth appealing.

Thanks.
Everything you mention has already been provided.

Icequeen99

Hheyes wrote: »

Thanks.
Everything you mention has already been provided.

I think the difficulty you have here is that at the time the claim was submitted in my view you weren't in remunerative work. Research periods are normally excluded - see for example TCTM02420 which says HMRC should consider

'the stage that is has reached, if the person is still developing the idea for example, they are undertaking the activity by have no clients or customers, then there is no element of remunerative work'.

It is much harder to show that you are commercial and particularly working with a view to realising a profit at that stage.

However, once you started trading it sounds like you probably do meet the criteria.

But the MR is looking at whether the decision that was made at the time for that date is correct.

I would suggest you speak to a welfare rights specialist. You may want to continue the appeal but submit a fresh claim, although it will only be backdated a month as if things have changed substantially it might get a claim into payment.

IQ