Can I buy a high-end laptop despite my IPA?

dipshit123456

My business is a website that I develop and run. I'm currently bankrupt, and sadly have an IPA set up. Business is booming though, and I'm making some excess money.

My currently laptop is a bit tired, and I wondered if I could legitimately spend £1500 on a new one as a business expense? My belief is that while I'm bankrupt I can't (it'd be too valuable a possession for me to own), but once I'm discharged I could buy it to avoid having to declare higher income to my IPA (since it's effectively a running cost of the business, rather than a personal luxury).

What do you think, am I right?

(Technically yes, I can do my job from a £500 laptop, but I can certainly do it better from a £1500 one.)

dipshit123456

I guess essentially if a purchase would be tax-deductible against my business if I were a normal non-bankrupt non-IPA-paying person, then it's probably fine for me to spend money on in spite of my IPA. The I in IPA stands for "income" after all; if I spend money on business expenses then that money isn't income. Simple, right?

AndyPix

dipshit123456 wrote: »

(Technically yes, I can do my job from a £500 laptop, but I can certainly do it better from a £1500 one.)

Rubbish ..

dipshit123456

Not rubbish - bigger screen, better battery for working on the move, more memory, better CPU (some of the bits of software I run are surprisingly resource-intensive), etc etc. Better is always better. Obviously the gains become more marginal the more you spend & I wouldn't bother buying a gaming laptop, but a high-end business machine certainly has its benefits.

AndyPix

Refurb dell latitude 7450 with core i7 vpro - 8GB ram and a 256GB ssd can easily be had for £500


That is a high end business laptop and any gains above that would be marginal indeed


Anything "better" than that is simply vanity and you cannot argue that it would allow you to work "better"


Nice try though

TheGardener

dipshit123456 wrote: »

My business is a website that I develop and run. I'm currently bankrupt, and sadly have an IPA set up. Business is booming though, and I'm making some excess money.

My currently laptop is a bit tired, and I wondered if I could legitimately spend £1500 on a new one as a business expense? My belief is that while I'm bankrupt I can't (it'd be too valuable a possession for me to own), but once I'm discharged I could buy it to avoid having to declare higher income to my IPA (since it's effectively a running cost of the business, rather than a personal luxury).

What do you think, am I right?

(Technically yes, I can do my job from a £500 laptop, but I can certainly do it better from a £1500 one.)

If the laptop is going to make you more money - and the OR can then increase the IPA - then its fine. If you can justify the business expenses and evidence a return then I doubt the OR will have any problem with it.
If you have a personal IPA and you have informed the OR of a change in income within the timescales permitted - then you could spend all your food budget on a new laptop and live on rice and beans for a month and the OR wouldn't give two hoots.
Buying the laptop isn't a problem - not telling the OR about a change of circumstances (booming business) is a problem.

dipshit123456

TheGardener: the IPA is only relevant to my net income though, right? If I spend more to run the business, whether it's on marketing or computer equipment or post-it notes, and leave myself with the same surplus income each month (my agreed IPA budget + my agreed IPA payment) then no-one can complain about that, can they?

I feel that if an expense can be claimed against tax for a normal person outside of an IPA, then it should be equally valid to someone with an IPA - if not, what am I missing?

dipshit123456

AndyPix: I don't feel it's the point of the thread, but fwiw I currently have an 8GB machine and regularly it slows to a crawl thanks to running out of memory due to virtual machines, heavy SQL loads and heavy IDE loads. Annoyingly the chips are soldered on so can't be expanded!

System

dipshit123456 wrote: »

AndyPix: I don't feel it's the point of the thread, but fwiw I currently have an 8GB machine and regularly it slows to a crawl thanks to running out of memory due to virtual machines, heavy SQL loads and heavy IDE loads. Annoyingly the chips are soldered on so can't be expanded!

You need a desktop not a laptop. You also need to be running a SSD, not a mechanical hard drive.

Andypix posted a laptop that is widely available from refurbishers which would more than suffice for 1/3 of the price and would only need a RAM upgrade. It seems that you've not learned the lessons from why you ended up bankrupt so you're probably going to end up in the same boat again down the line.

dont_use_vistaprint

You need a Dell XPS, latest generation i7, 16Gb, SSD. £1500-£2000 is a reasonable cost for a business machine. Latitudes and Vostros are rubbish. For another £500 you can add a couple of ASUS USB-C screens so you work more efficiently and travel. If you regularly work with SQL SSMS you need 2-3 Screens min and 8Gb is far too low.

Jono987

AndyPix wrote: »

Refurb dell latitude 7450 with core i7 vpro - 8GB ram and a 256GB ssd can easily be had for £500


That is a high end business laptop and any gains above that would be marginal indeed


Anything "better" than that is simply vanity and you cannot argue that it would allow you to work "better"


Nice try though

Lol, high end maybe if all you do is spreadsheets. 8gb Ram, no dedicated gfx card etc is 100% not a 'high end business machine'. I run multiple monitors for my SCADA software and up to 3 Virtual Machines running different manufacturers PLC code. My company bought me a fairly expensive laptop (circa 1700) and even that struggles sometimes, so when working from home i use my desktop computer.

There is no way i could work successfully on a £500 laptop unfortunately.