revenue sculpting tips for self employed UC claimants who are VAT registered

seatbeltnoob

Hello

This is a quick tip for those in the situation in the title. My UC claim would fluctaute quite heavily because I was doing quarterly VAT returns and every 3 months my profits would go down a lot because I was paying 3 months of VAT in one go.

Did you know, you can actually just bank transfer money to HMRC to pay VAT early. They update your VAT account within 2 days of receiving the money so you can keep a track of these.

I decided to pay my VAT monthly (you accounting software can produce reports giving you each months VAT due). At the end of the month, I get the books up to date, and the VAT accrued I just do a bank transfer.

The VAT balanced is accrued, not prepaid, so you can make monthly payments and it wont be regarded as depriving capital, because you actually owe that amount to hmrc.

I heard you can do the same with corporation tax (in fact HMRC pay you interest of you pay your corp tax early).

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this is slightly cheeky, but you can load a credit balance with certain suppliers, like Google Adwords. Although I wouldn't do this for more than a months span. Because that would be depriving of capital.

I received an unexpected ampunt of money of £1300 more than normal, it was a one off. I just preloaded by Google Adwords account with £900. So I could essentially defer the profits for later periods to sculpt my income so it's even.