One of the hardest things about being self-employed is trying to understand the ‘business’ bit of what you do and it can be really difficult to balance your love and passion for promoting and selling your products or services with your obligations to report your business activity.
And let’s be honest, no-one really wants to spend precious down-time doing their bookkeeping.
At 1tap we feel your frustration. So we’ve put together a basic A-Z guide to the expenses you can and should be claiming. While we aim to cover the main types of expenses you can claim, it is by no means a fully exhaustive list and you should get independent advice and carry out further investigation of your own. However, it should set you firmly on the path to paying less tax by ensuring you are claiming what you are entitled to.*
Three key things to remember when claiming expenses:
THING ONE – Don’t claim personal things
The law states that expenses claimed are to be “wholly and exclusively incurred in the performance of the business”. Which means anything purchased for personal use should not be claimed. Keep this in mind when you are unsure of an expense and you won’t go far wrong. HMRC aren’t out to get you for genuine mistakes, but you should use a bit of common sense when making your claims.
THING TWO – Keep a copy of all your receipts
You must keep copies of your receipts for six years to comply with HMRC requirements. HRMC are quite happy with electronically stored copies so you don’t have to keep the originals. If you photograph your receipts and store them with 1Tap, we’ve got you covered.
THING THREE – Give evidence where no receipt can
While you won’t get away with providing no receipts whatsoever, you don’t necessarily need a receipt for every single claim. If you lose a receipt or forget to get one, you can still make a claim – as long as you can provide robust evidence to back it up (date, amount and reason) and of course, the claim is deemed a reasonably acceptable one.
Read more here.