Self employed already and second business (sort of)

falcieri

I have been self employed for 7 years. Last year I published a book not related to my current business, which has a small income and a few expenses. Do I need to declare this as a 'second business' and in that case do I just write 'author' or should I add it to the current business where it says 'any other business income not declared'. With thanks.

Savvy_Sue

falcieri wrote: »

I have been self employed for 7 years. Last year I published a book not related to my current business, which has a small income and a few expenses. Do I need to declare this as a 'second business' and in that case do I just write 'author' or should I add it to the current business where it says 'any other business income not declared'. With thanks.

In the absence of any other answers: HMRC don't care how you earn your money, as long as you pay tax on all you're supposed to.

I think you could do either: I'm not familiar with the self-assessment forms these days.

If you expect to write more, then separating the income and expenses would IMO be worth doing, for your own interest. But HMRC won't care, so just putting it under 'any other ...' would also be fine.

Mistral001

Yes HMRC generally do not care how you make your money, if you declare all income. However you must not try to deceive them as to how you make your money.

Pennywise

As a sole trader, anything done under your name is really the same business, i.e. you.

You'd only put down two separate business supplementary sections if you had two distinct businesses that were operated separately, i.e. each with their own expenses, own employees, etc.

Presumably some of the expenses you;re claiming on your main self employment were also used for the authoring, i.e. use of your business computers, internet, printers, etc., so really to comply with the "matching" concept, you should either put all income down as business income, or split out the "duality" expenses so that a proportion of expenses is set against the main business and a proportion set against the authoring business. That seems quite a waste of effort for no reason.

If it were me, I'd just include all income/expenses under the single business of you.

falcieri

Thanks for the responses everyone. I've decided to put it in as a separate business simply because the authoring bears no relation to my other business and the book wasn't produced under the other business name. Like you say, as long as it's all declared for tax purposes that's all they really care about and I've explained it all in the notes online. I thought it best to keep things clearly separate in that respect. Everything's been declared so I suppose that's what they want more than anything.