Hi Alison, I'm fairly new to ICB, but have been doing accounting/bookkeeping type work for a number of years.
It is my understanding that if you have expenses in respect of your self-employment in the seven years before you commenced trading, you may be able to claim these items against your profits. The expenditure is treated as an expense incurred on the first day of trading.
This will have been paid privately due to no business bank account being open and therefore would be credited to the sole trader's current account as capital introduced and debited either to assets or expenditure appropriately.
As regards where to draw the line, I suppose common sense will have to prevail. The fact that he is now using them for the business means that some form of charge can be made to his accounts as they are being used to provide his income.
Maybe others will have more of an idea on where to draw the line. Hope that helps a little.
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