Income to use on Finance Application

ActiveProscratinator

I very rarely use credit.  I am lucky enough to have owned my house outright since 2010 and the only credit I have used since then was taking advantage of a 2-year interest free credit deal on a new bed about 5 or 6 years ago.

However, I may soon need to change my car and I was thinking about taking out a relatively small amount of credit which led me to think about what figure I should be using as my annual income.

To try to explain my thought process - imagine a situation in which two people were doing identical part time jobs for 5 days a week in the same place and each received £300 per week for an annual salary of £15,600. Let's forget tax for now to keep things simple.

Employee A lives a 2 minute walk from work and therefore spends nothing on travel.

Employee B lives 20 miles away and over the course of a year travels 9,000 miles due to commuting, at a total fuel cost of around £1,350. 

This means employee B has £1,350 less money in his or her pocket than employee A but presumably they both declare the same income figure of £15,600.

If a self-employed person (which I am) also earned £15,600 in a year and travelled 9,000 miles per year in connection with their business they would be able to claim expenses of 45p per mile which comes to £4,050.  They would therefore inform HMRC that their net income was £11,550 (£15,600 minus £4,050).

I was assuming that if that were my situation then I would state on an application that my income was £11,550 to marry up to the HMRC records.  However, in that particular scenario, I would actually be in an identical financial position as employee B (same income, same fuel cost - remember my actual fuel costs in this scenario would only be £1,350 - it does not actually cost me 45p per mile), but employee B would be able to complete an application with an income showing as £4,050 more than mine.

Would I be right to use the net income figure of £11,550, or should I be putting the gross income of £15,600 on the basis that employees do not (I presume) have their commuting costs taken off their salary figure for the purposes of completing a credit application?

I do not want to shoot myself in the foot by reducing my chance of acceptance or increasing my rate of interest, but nor do I want it to look as though I am giving misleading information to gain credit.

Apologies that this is somewhat wordy, but I hope I have been clear with my thinking and what I am asking before I need to apply for anything.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

marcia_

 I would be putting gross income just as an employed applicant would 

Phoenix72

marcia_ said:

 I would be putting gross income just as an employed applicant would 

I wouldn't.....they are self-employed and it's normal to state net profits.