Eventually agreed to help a semi retired neighbour to do his SA.
He is currently employed in Agriculture and seasonally does beating at shoots. But his beating expenses dog food, vet bills etc far our weigh his beating income, by about 70%.
For the beating only -I was thinking I should only claim enough expenses to clear the income therefore no tax would be due.
But if is always going to be year on year a loss position then isnt really a business as the nature of being in business is to be in business is to make profit. This being the case HMRC would probably argue that you should claim expenses to show a £nil gain/loss.
The Agricultural Contracting side of the business has made a profit and he will have to pay tax on that, it was just the beating side of it, that I as was unsure about.
I did read somewhere that HMRC would like to class beating as a hobby, as beaters are now going self employed so they can reclaim feed etc to save paying tax.
I would have probably put it all under one umbrella, as it it is still an Agricultural Contract type of business, just a different profit centre (or loss centre in this case)
Rather than showing two different businesses. If you really want to seperate them, I would put the full loss into the SATR to offset some of the profit from the core business.
As Mark, and yourself have already mentioned though, you would need to clarify if the intention of your client is to make money from it. If it is not then it is a hobby, and need not be entered on the SATR at all, and therefore no loss is claimable.
