Who must send a tax return? You must send a tax return if, in the last tax year (6 April to 5 April), you were:

• Self-employed as a ‘sole trader’ and earned more than £1,000 (before taking off anything you can claim tax relief on)
• A partner in a business partnership

You will not usually need to send a return if your only income is from your wages or pension. But you may need to send one if you have any other untaxed income, such as:

• Money from renting out a property
• Tips and commission
• Income from savings, investments and dividends
• Foreign income
• Capital gains on disposal of assets

You can choose to fill in a tax return to:

• Claim some Income Tax reliefs e.g. you have foreign investment income that has already been taxed, or have made investments under the EIS amongst other reliefs
• Prove you are self-employed, for example to claim Tax-Free Childcare or Maternity Allowance
• If you get Child Benefit – if your income (or your partner’s, if you have one) was over £50,000, you may need to send a return and pay the High Income Child Benefit Charge.

Information IMFCoult require to complete your self assesment accounts:

Your accountancy fee will depend very much on the quality of information provided. If you produce your own accounts great, we can simply incorporate that in to your tax return but we are happy to work from your own accounting system (if you have one), from spreadsheets, back of the envelope notes, bags of receipts. What you can provide will affect your fee with the more organised books incurring much smaller fees and so on.

If you do not have accounts or spreadsheets to provide you will need to provide the following:

• P60s – income, pensions
• P11ds – employment benefits
• Details of State pension and any other benefits eg disability, bereavement
• Dividend vouchers
• Consolidated Tax Vouchers from unit trust investments
• Interest certificates or details of any bank or other interest earned
• Capital Gains and losses – details of any disposals of assets
• Any other income (worldwide)
• Any correspondence with HMRC include notices of coding, statements of account and details of any payments already made

• Your self-employed income must be included on your Income Tax Return. You do not need to produce a separate set of annual accounts but these are a useful way to produce proof of income if you are applying for a mortgage or finance or wanting to rent a property, secure a loan etc.
• They are also useful to ensure that you collect all your expenses and claim all tax relief available to you.
• Whether the information goes straight on your tax return or whether you have separate accounts, your self-employed accounts should include
• All your income from being self-employed whether cash or otherwise
• All your expenses incurred in connection with your self-employed business.

Such expenses would normally include:

• Travel expenses – you can claim any business travel (including flights) to and from your client’s premises, places that you work etc. If you use a car/van try and estimate your business mileage for the year and add any congestion charges and parking charges, and we can work out what to claim. If you use public transport or have a travel card you can claim those costs. If you have bought an annual travel card, try and estimate how much you use this for business vs private usage, and we can claim the appropriate percentage. If you buy tickets on an ad hoc basis we can try and work out an estimate based on the normal number of journeys undertaken e.g. if you look at an average week and extrapolate from there.
• Subsistence – you can claim for meals when you are working away from home (there is a daily lunch allowance you can claim for days working away from home, let us know how many days to claim if that is relevant)
• Use of home as office – depending on the number of hours you spend working from home there are fixed rates you can claim. If you can let me know how many hours per week you are working from home, we can work this out for you. If you are working mostly from home, it is sometimes beneficial to claim the actual costs. You work this out by adding up all your household costs (i.e. rent/mortgage, heating, insurance etc) and applying a percentage based on the space you use compared to the overall space of your home.
• Computer/internet/mobile phone costs. You can claim all of these, less an estimate for personal use. You can also claim for any new computer/phone/office equipment or furniture you have bought for use in your business, even if it is just to do your admin.
• Stationery – paper, ink, notebooks etc that you might use
• Any other tools or equipment bought to use in your business.
• Clothing – if you have specific clothing to use you can claim for this cost and the cleaning thereof.
• Marketing costs and advertising
• Insurance – business and public liability
• Professional and legal fees (e.g. Accountancy fees)
• Professional and trade subscriptions – if you are a member of any trade bodies that require a subscription you can claim these costs, also any trade publications you might buy
• Bank charges (monthly charges on your bank account used for your business).

Information IMFCoult require to complete your self-employed accounts:

Your accountancy fee will depend very much on the quality of information provided. If you produce your own accounts great, we can simply incorporate that in to your tax return but we are happy to work from your own accounting system (if you have one), from spreadsheets, back of the envelope notes, bags of receipts. What you can provide will affect your fee with the more organised books incurring much smaller fees and so on.

If you do not have accounts or spreadsheets to provide you will need to provide the following:

• Bank statements for the entire accounting year (business statements if you have them, personal statements if not)
• All Sales invoices/receipts/bills that you produce to charge your customers
• Details of any Coronavirus grants received including SEISS payments
• Receipts for expenses (see above)
• Details of any other expenses that you don’t have receipts for
• Estimate of business mileage
• Estimate of business use of phones and internet
• Estimate of amount off time you spend working from home

• If your business is operating as a limited company, you will need to submit your company accounts to Companies House as well as to HMRC with your Corporation Tax Return form. Your bookkeeping records will form the basis of these statutory financial statements.

Information IMFCoult require to complete your accounts:

Again, your accountancy fee will depend very much on the quality of information provided. If you have your own accounting software and can produce management accounts, we can take it from there and produce your statutory accounts and tax returns. If you are not at that level with your limited company book-keeping we can use information from spreadsheets, back of the envelope notes, bags of receipts etc. and help you re-create the accounting entries to allow you to comply with limited company standards as outlined above. Any such additional accountancy work and record keeping will be considered when arriving at your likely fee.

If you do not have accounts or spreadsheets to provide you will need to provide the following:

• All money received and spent by the company, including grants and payments from coronavirus support schemes
• Details of assets owned by the company
• Debts the company owes or is owed
• Stock the company owns at the end of the financial year
• The stocktaking’s you used to work out the stock figure
• All goods bought and sold
• Who you bought and sold them to and from (unless you run a retail business)?

You must also keep any other financial records, information and calculations you need to prepare and file your annual accounts and Company Tax Return. This includes records of:

• All money spent by the company, for example receipts, petty cash books, orders and delivery notes
• All money received by the company, for example invoices, contracts, sales books and till rolls
• Any other relevant documents, for example bank statements and correspondence

Other Company records:

• In addition to your accounting records there are several records that must be maintained at Companies House

You must keep details of:

• Directors, shareholders, company secretaries and people with significant control

• The results of any shareholder votes and resolutions

• Promises for the company to repay loans at a specific date in the future (‘debentures’) and who they must be paid back to

• Promises the company makes for payments if something goes wrong and it’s the company’s fault (‘indemnities’)

• Transactions when someone buys shares in the company

• Loans or mortgages secured against the company’s assets
• As well as submitting annual accounts you must complete and file an annual Confirmation Statement with Companies House regarding these additional records