Multiple businesses - self emplyed

[spyder01]

I run an established business as a gardener and am retraining as a plumber. Can I claim for the cost of the plumbing training course, tools etc? I am doing a few small plumbing jobs that is bringing in a small income.

[mullet]

You cannot claim a deduction for the initial training to become a plumber as such training only puts you in a position to start your business. You can however claim for the costs of ongoing training/reaccreditation etc, as such training maintains your skills to enable you to continue your business.

If you have two distinct businesses then you should not combine income and expenses; you should keep two sets of records and complete two sets of self employment pages.

[stevestone]

Thank you for this excellent & thoughtful post, so full of ideas.. it is helpful & your post motivated me..thank

[ranasarkar]

• gguguyguyguyg

[Ian McTernan CTA]

Always a bit of a tricky area. You state you have already taken on some small plumbing jobs, which could change the nature of the training from 'putting you in a position to be able to do the work' to 'refreshing skills and additional training'. I'd need to look at it a lot closer but on balance depending on when the course started as opposed to when you started doing plumbing jobs it might be possible to claim the cost of the course against the plumbing income.

It's always fun to argue this sort of point with HMRC as to where exactly such expenditure falls. At the end of the day improving your skill set should pull in more money which means more net profit which means more tax revenue for HMRC, so you would have thought they would be falling over themselves to encourage such expenditure...