Maximising income - Mystery Shopping? Surveys? (Part Three)

hayley50

Thank you D4WNO!! what a great help I will let you know how I get on.

Timmne

Two posts have questioned allowable expenses - here are my thoughts!

Mimi1234: Laptop - technically you could do this. You'd have to capitalise it (which means add it to your assets rather than take it off your profits) and then charge depreciation (the taxable version of this is called capital allowances) on the cost.

As to whether you could claim it is exclusively for your business is completely another matter! If it is, then you've made a desperately bad business decision as MSing would NEVER pay enough for you to be able to afford a laptop and still make a decent profit. If it isn't, then you're going to have to try and lie to HMRC if they come asking - not worth doing IMO.

Candy0107: any stationery costs are fine to claim - as with any genuine business expense. Just ask yourself whenever you buy anything whether it's exclusively and necessarily for your business - i.e. whether you genuinely need this to run your business effectively. Filing cabinets are another matter though - these can't simply be taken off your profit if they cost more than £50ish; they'll need to be capitalised (see my point on the laptop above).

Broadband connection is one that people are forever doing wrong (based on incorrect advice!) and actually has some specific rules drawn up by HMRC. Basically you have to estimate the % split between private and business use, and you're allowed to deduct the business proportion from your income to arrive at your profit. I deduct £4.33 per month as my broadband charge for the business as 1/3 of the monthly broadband cost in total. See this page on the HMRC site for the detail on this!

jobbingmusician

I DID claim a laptop from my profits in 2006-7 (the return I put in earlier this month, in time for the Jan 31st deadline.) In that year I did some consultancy work and was employed by an umbrella company (under an arrangement which was OK at the time, but which is now no longer possible). I genuinely bought a laptop in order to do the consultancy, and I also use this for MS. As I also have a desktop, I estimated that 90% of the laptop use is for employment purposes, and followed the rules on the tax form (there are help boxes as you go through it) to claim back the appropriate proportion (if I got it right ) for the year.*

I also claimed back 1/3 of my broadband costs. Much more than 1/3 of my time on the internet is spent on MS issues!!!!

*Depressingly, it looks as if this laptop might be on the way out, as the 'c' key has just decided to misbehave during this post!

jtb2412

Hi

Fairly new to the site so please be gentle with me ! I've registered on a couple of MS sites and I have my first MS on Thursday ! I've read my assignment several times and am pretty sure I know exactly what i'm doing, BUT i'm really worried i'm going to get tongue tied and forget something really important ! Any of you experienced MS'ers got any good advice for a first timer please?
Thanks in advance :0)

Timmne

What's the job you're doing and for which company? (don't mention the client name though!) i.e. phone shop for GAP....

If we know this it'll be dead easy to give advice; most of us have done most of the shops lots of times!

claireabelle_2

Some lunch-type shops on RE at the moment!

jtb2412

Hi Timmne

I'm working for GAP and it's a 'food assignment' (hope i'm allowed to say that !)

Timmne

Is it a chicken or a burger one?

hayley11

Went on RE about 10 mins ago and there were LOADS of a certain sandwhich shop on there and they went soooo fast! I've not being doing this long so was quite shocked! I managed to get one though, yay! I've got 4 assignments coming up in the next week, yay again!

Timmne

Hayley you'll find that's because once you accept one, they'll all disappear until you've submitted the report for it - you're only allowed to do one at a time nowadays.