The Lemon Fool

I'm doing my self assessment tax return and always have a niggle that I miss opportunities to legitimately reduce tax by missing allowances or including all relevant costs etc. Any tips from anyone here? Our income sources are as follows;

Me

• Employer's private pension - nothing much to do here as tax paid at source?
• Holiday let property - I simply list total income and all expenses that are related to arrive at a net profit. Is there anything more I can do here?
• Income from a couple of small self-employed trading businesses with combined income of around £2,500 to £3,000. What can I offset here?

Mrs C

• Employer's private pension
• Three very part time jobs which are PAYE; claim professional body membership for one of them.

Even though I run a home-office I don't claim any deductions for use of space and utility costs. Can I?

Thanks
Clarimetn

Home office = yes. I dont know the exact rules but my accountant always wants to know usage stats etc.

Any business mileage (I pay myself 45p a mile for business related trips (although not to and from your place of work)

You might be able to stick some money into a personal pension?

All expenses re property. I think you have to be careful here as to what's allowable. Repairs are, improvements might not be. I was always guided by my accountant.

Any computers etc bought by the business? IIRC, the allowances for tech are good and immediate.

Profits diverted through an Irish letter box company, with identical royalty fees charged by a Dutch shell company before being diverted to a secret offshore trust in the Cayman Islands?

Or how about setting up a Monaco bank account in your dogs name?

Or having your company pay your salary to a Jersey Trust that sends back money to you tax free as a loan payment?

Look man, we're all doing it. Get with the program.

Any other ideas from anyone?

Re Home Office.

I think you have to be careful about claiming any share of any mortgage payments and council tax liability as that may have Capital Gains consequesnces when/if you come to sell your house but when I ran a limited company business from home I always claimed back 25% of annual lighting and heating costs (could be a worthwhile amount with energy costs being what they are nowadays). That's what my accountant told me to do and I carried on when I dispnsed with his services.

But the above amounts were claimed as an expense against the company's tax liability and reimbursed to me as the bill payer.

I just looked online and see things changed a bit from 2013 so this might help:-

https://taxaid.org.uk/guides/informatio ... -as-office

Clariman wrote:Any other ideas from anyone?

I assume you are claiming the £1000 tax free trading allowance on your self employment earnings?

It might be beneficial to have your tax return handled by an accountant just the once, so you can see what, when & how. Probably only cost a couple of hundred (tax deductible ) pounds.

Don't forget to claim any gift aid if you are in the higher tax bracket.
Don't forget any savings income above your psa allowance.

When I rented property I claimed for using my home as an office......but I had residential lets not holiday let's where the rules are different.

Clariman wrote:I'm doing my self assessment tax return and always have a niggle that I miss opportunities to legitimately reduce tax by missing allowances or including all relevant costs etc. Any tips from anyone here? Our income sources are as follows;

Me

• Employer's private pension - nothing much to do here as tax paid at source?
• Holiday let property - I simply list total income and all expenses that are related to arrive at a net profit. Is there anything more I can do here?
• Income from a couple of small self-employed trading businesses with combined income of around £2,500 to £3,000. What can I offset here?

Mrs C

• Employer's private pension
• Three very part time jobs which are PAYE; claim professional body membership for one of them.

Even though I run a home-office I don't claim any deductions for use of space and utility costs. Can I?

Thanks
Clarimetn

Re the holiday let, whilst not a relief, do take care each year that it meets the rules to qualify as presumably a furnished holiday let (Availability and nights, averaging, grace periods etc) as this may well have a bearing on future CGT if you sell and it is of course declared on a different page on the ITR with a slightly different computation approach.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... tings-2021

Remember Capital Allowances may be on point.

Clariman wrote: Even though I run a home-office I don't claim any deductions for use of space and utility costs. Can I?
Thanks
Clarimetn

Yes yes yes
https://www.gosimpletax.com/blog/workin ... -expenses/

Note that you can amend a submitted tax return within 12 months of the submission deadline. So you have until the end of this month to amend your 20/21 tax return, eg for home office expenses etc that you have not been claiming