Expenses for self assessment

Adly812

I am a self employed fitness instructor and fitness teacher. I’m working out my expenses and I’ve researched things I can claim for under allowable expenses but I am uncertain about internet?
I work from home and I use my internet to research, email clients, run my website, online booking etc.
But can this be an allowable expense, as obviously I also use my broadband for non work related browsing.
And my phone contract, it’s for work and non work too.
What’s the rule of thumb for this please ?

Excuse ignorance.

Pennywise

As a sole trader, you claim a percentage of any costs incurred that are part private, part business. It's up to you to "self assess" the percentage. So if you think you use the broadband half of the time for personal use and half the time for business use, then you claim half the costs. No one else can say for you and there are no fixed percentages as everyone is different.

However, there are some fixed amounts for "use of home" to cover power, utilities, insurance, etc., based on the number of hours you work at home, but telephone/broadband is separate.

uknick

You can claim your business element. But, if you have already have internet at home for personal use and it is a fixed charge, as most are, you would be hard pushed to justify what element would be business use only unless you keep a time log. Same with phone contracts. See here for more details

https://www.gov.uk/expenses-if-youre-self-employed

Have you looked at the trading allowance? You can get £1,000 per year as an allowance for expenses without having to justify the claim. This is used by a lot of small traders who don't have much in the way of expenses.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-free-allowances-on-property-and-trading-income#trade

Adly812

uknick wrote: »

Have you looked at the trading allowance? You can get £1,000 per year as an allowance for expenses without having to justify the claim. This is used by a lot of small traders who don't have much in the way of expenses.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-free-allowances-on-property-and-trading-income#trade

That probably would apply to me. As I don’t have much in expenses.
So instead of working out individual expenses such as travel, internet, phone etc, would I just claim a flat £1000 as total expenses and subtract that from earnings ?

Pennywise

Smb3088 wrote: »

That probably would apply to me. As I don’t have much in expenses.
So instead of working out individual expenses such as travel, internet, phone etc, would I just claim a flat £1000 as total expenses and subtract that from earnings ?

Yes, but the £1,000 is the total of everything, you can't claim for anything else at all. So the calculation of taxable profit is basically:-

Sales (what the customer pays you in total)
Less £1000
Equals taxable profits

Good for consultants etc who just sell time, but usually not appropriate for anyone selling items or who has higher expenses.

Adly812

Brilliant thank you