Claiming professional expenses after retirement

[GaiusScotius]

I am a retired solicitor in Scotland. I am no longer in practice, but undertake some pro bono work for a charity of which I am a trustee. To give legal advice requires that I maintain my law society practicing certificate, which in turn means I must pay their fees, the SLCC levy and undertake CPD. All told this is well over £1,000 per yea; when in practice I claimed these costs as professional expenses.

Is it possible to claim professional expenses now I am retired and not in employment? I only complete the pension income page of the SA return, which does not permit expenses to be entered.

As a corollary question, can voluntary work be considered as self-employment? If so, can I set off a loss in such self-employment to reduce the amount of taxable pension income? That would have the same effect as being able to claim my professional costs against my pension income.

Any help gratefully received; quite clearly I am not a tax lawyer!

[AdamS93]

No.

If you incur expenses for employment you can offset these against your employment income only. As you don't have employment income, this cannot be done.

You can only offset losses against other income (sideways loss relief) if there is a commercial trade (i.e. view to profit) - as you are working voluntarily this is not met (Dipak Patel v HMRC).

Why not charge a nominal amount to cover your expenses?

[GaiusScotius]

@AdamS93: Thanks for your reply, it confirms something that was nagging away in my head - perhaps something did stick from the LLB tax lectures all those years past!

Further searches dug out the case of [2000] STC (SCD) 404 Singh v Williams (Inspector of Taxes), which deals with a retired doctor in an analogous position and seems to have been quoted in other circumstance (e.g. a retired consulting marine engineer).

Charity trustees cannot be remunerated, although they may receive reasonable out of pocket expenses. Unless I could persuade the board that it's a legitimate expense to the benefit of the charity, I guess it may be time to drop the practicing certificate.