I am new here and wondered if anyone could help. I am waiting to sit my level 2 manual bookkeeping exam but have not done any specific course for self assesment. A friend has asked me to help him with his self assesment for 09/10. He is a sole trader but has 3 separate businesses. To my understanding he should fill out SA100 & SA101, plus a supplementary page for each business. Problem is, each business started at a different time. He says this is his first self assesment although one of the businesses started in Dec 08 so I am thinking he should have completed one last year although he says HMRC said this was not necessary. Do you think this is something we could manage together or would it be best to send him to an accountant? Also it would be much simpler if he could combine the 3 into one business as they are all in the same field and coincide his accounting period with the fisal year. I have tried looking at HMRC help guides but unable to view them.
If his 3 business are in the same field and he is self employed ie sole trader, he will be viewed as 1 business anyway - why does he have 3 in the same field? I would bulk them together, even better if they have the same year end date, happy days.
If all 3 business's are the same then he needs to combine them on his tax return. You can break certain trades up but you need different entities to do it, such as sole trader, partnership and ltd company. For example, I know a guy who is a tax specialist so does his tax advice and investigation work separate from his accounting practice.
With regards to starting in Dec 08, yes he should have done a tax return to 5th April 2009, however you can have up to 18 month accounting period on 1 tax return, but he should still have done a 2009 tax return in my opinion just so that he could treat either 5th April or 31st March as his year end so that it falls in line with the tax year.
There is more to it and it is tricky so I would definitely run this by an accountant to get it sorted and then you can do the following years for him once you have been pointed in the right direction.
