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Introduction
When you start your own UK contracting business, can you claim for your pre-incorporation expenses? What’s more, when you are starting up your own company, what’s the considerations around small business incorporation costs? First of all, pre-trading expenditure (limited company) are expenses before incorporation (UK) or before you set up a business. Therefore, when we consider can you claim expenses before a business starts (UK), you’ll incur such pre-incorporation costs before you start your chosen trade. Indeed, in business, most new start-ups will incur pre-trading expenses and business start-up costs (UK) before they set up for real.
As a UK limited company contractor or small business, you may incur pre-incorporation costs before you start to trade. Therefore, besides thoughts on whether you can you write off expenses before incorporation, are company formation costs tax-deductible too? HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) have their own rules on pre-trade expenses. Therefore, in this guide we’ll look at what are pre incorporation expenses (HMRC). What’s more, we’ll look into what sort of pre-commencement expenses you could incur in your business start-up. Further, we’ll look at when are incorporation fees tax-deductible.
It may be quite costly in terms of business start-up costs (UK), when you first start a new company. Therefore, when you set up a company for your UK contracting business, what should you give thought tor? Indeed, it is key to make sure you are aware of the pre company and pre-incorporation expenses accounting treatment. It’s also crucial to know what you can claim for as part of your pre-trade expenditure. As a result, your business will receive tax relief on your allowed pre-trading costs. In this guide, we’ll look at the initial expenses for a business, the company incorporation expenses accounting treatment and a business’s establishment costs accounting treatment.
Initial thoughts on claiming expenses before business started
What are pre-incorporation expenses?
Whether you are a sole trader or have your own company, you will incur certain costs and expenses for starting a business. What’s more, you will incur such costs before you start your trade. These pre-business expenses prior to starting your trade, may vary in nature. Also, in the outset, you may have to spend a fair amount of money to get your new business off the ground. Therefore, are company formation expenses tax-deductible and are other business start-up costs tax deductible?
Besides the cost of incorporation, you will incur various costs before your first day of trade. Om the other hand, you will incur such pre trade expenses before you make your first sale, or start to provide your UK contracting services. Therefore, in respect of such costs, let’s look into the treatment of pre-incorporation expenses.
Business start-up costs (UK)
When your business starts up, the set-up costs you incur will include any UK incorporation costs and these may be a costly outlay. Therefore, as a new business, what are the rules on start-up costs? If you are setting up a new business now, the good news is you can claim tax relief on any genuine business expenses. Therefore, when you start your own business, you should be accounting for start-up costs prior to the setup of your new company.
Therefore, you can claim for your contractor pre-trading expenditure and any company incorporation expenses, as long as they are bona fide as business expenses. As a result, you should keep a record of these and retain any receipts for your costs. Therefore, the expenses before incorporation will be part of the expenses in your business’ first set of accounts. What’s more, these expenses and costs will save tax in due course and you can claim them back from your business.
Common questions
Many first-time start-ups, including contractors will have initial questions. These will cover what they can claim in terms of business expenses before incorporation:
- What are incorporation costs?
- Are business start-up costs tax-deductible?
- Can I claim expenses before a business starts?
- Can you claim business expenses before incorporation?
- How to record start-up expenses?
- What are incorporation costs?
- How much does incorporation cost?
Therefore, in this guide we’ll take a look at the tax treatment of start-up costs before incorporation. Also, we’ll study the expenses incurred before commencement of business.
Our other guides
On this website, we have a great first-timer’s guide to contracting in the UK. This will give you a complete rundown on the steps you will take when you first start up. What’s more, there are also some key differences between contracting and freelancing in the UK. Indeed, these are worth a look at depending on your type of business.
Please also read our guide which covers tax tips for UK contractors. This contains a lot of great tips and sound advice which you should know when you have your own business. This includes our latest guidance for the best tax planning ideas.
Pre-incorporation expenses and how these work
When you first start up
Your contractor pre-trading expenses (limited company) consist of the costs you pay out before the trade or contracting work commences. As a general rule, trade is unable to commence until you are:
- In a position to supply the goods and services which your business will provide (e.g., you have bought some stock); and
- In a position to offer to provide the goods and services to your customers and clients.
These are both basic facts with regard to where you need to be before your trade starts.
UK company incorporation fees
When you set up a limited company, are incorporation costs tax-deductible? These costs will include The Companies House incorporation fee of £12. This is the standard amount payable when someone opens a new company in the UK. The costs could also include service costs by a third party for completing the company set up process for you.
If we look into the above further, the rules state that you cannot charge the company formation cost against Corporation Tax. As a result of the UK company incorporation costs tax treatment, the actual incorporation fee and third-party costs for forming a UK company are treated as a capital expense. Therefore, to sum up, you can’t claim tax relief on the actual incorporation cost through your company. On the other hand, it is the case that most other business formation costs and expenses incurred before incorporation of company are tax-deductible. Therefore, you will save tax on your other pre trading costs.
The types of costs in contractor pre-trading expenses
Besides the business formation expenses, the types of pre-trading expenditure that the owner of a UK contractor limited company or small business can treat as business cost for tax purposes will include:
- Travel expenses before business started. This includes travel to attend business training courses, see recruiters, attend interviews, see the bank, etc.
- Training course costs -these could include professional training and exams before you take up your contracting career.
- Accountancy costs for any pre company work.
- Business insurance that you will set up at the outset however you can’t put this in place until you have a company.
- Office rental and use of home as an office. There is a standard HMRC rate of £6 per week when you work at home.
- Stationery, printing, and postage costs. This could include advertising costs too.
- Phone bills and broadband charges. These will include and phone and broadband use for business purposes before your company starts.
- Domain names and web hosting costs for your business website.
- Professional subscriptions to organisations that you’re a member of. These need to be relevant to the type of work you will be performing once your company is set up.
- Business clothing -this depends on what sort of work you do.
- Pre-trading capital expenditure items such as computer and office equipment. This may include a PC or laptop and other hardware such as printers, drives and other equipment.
When you claim for the above costs as expenses before commencement of business, they should be wholly and exclusively for the purpose of the trade. If you keep a note of your pre-trading expenses, Corporation Tax you will save tax on these costs in due course. Therefore, please obtain and retain receipts for all pre business costs and you can save tax for your business at a later date.
Other aspects to think about
Contractor pre-incorporation expenses treatment
Once you start your contracting work or you start trading, the pre-trading expenditure which relates to your trade profession or vocation is treated as an expense when we compute the profits. What’s more, the costs which you incur will be treated as though they were incurred on the first day of trading. As a result, this will reduce your tax bill for your first accounting period. Therefore, the savings will be as follows:
- If you have your own company, it will save Corporation Tax.
- If you are self-employed, it will reduce your Income Tax bill.
Pre-incorporation expenses and VAT
Your business may choose to register for VAT when you first set it up. The general rules on VAT are:
- You need to register your business if your sales will exceed £85K pa.
- You can opt to register your business voluntarily.
Many limited company contractors register for VAT, even if they are not above the £85K threshold. This is because there are other benefits to doing so, such as being able to reclaim the VAT on your costs. Therefore, if you register, you can also reclaim the VAT element of your expenses which you incur before business incorporation on:
- Any goods or products you bought up to four years prior to setting up your business.
- Any services you incur up to six months before the start of your trade.
The Corporation Tax Act 2009 covers pre-trading expenses in more detail. Please also see VAT notice HMRC VIT32000. This VAT notice explains the process in more detail when you reclaim VAT on pre-incorporation expenses treatment.
Once your trading starts, you can claim much of the above-listed costs. This is as well as any other new costs you incur while you run your new business.
Keep your receipts
As with all business costs, you should keep evidence that the money was spent. This comes in the form of a receipt or invoice. In this day and age, many retailers will ask for your email address with the move to digital. When you give them this, they can send the receipt to you via email. Therefore, you should store your receipts, both paper and electronic, in an organised format. As a result, you can view these later on, if the need arises.
Pre-incorporation income
In some cases, you may receive some income from your work before your company is set up. As a result, you will have received this personally. Therefore, you could pay this into your company bank account once this is in place. On the other hand, you could declare it to HMRC as self-employment income. This second choice will result in the need to register for self-employment with HMRC. In most cases, it is best to choose the former option if it relates to your contracting income through your new company.
Setting up as a limited company contractor
If you are now setting up as a contractor for the first time you will have a number of tasks. These include set up your company, appoint an accountant and open a company bank account. There will no doubt be other start up tasks too.
Besides the above tasks, you should also look into contractor insurance. Your new contract will state which types of insurance to get in place for your future work. Indeed, you will more than likely have to take out Professional Indemnity insurance although you may require other contractor insurances too. Through this contractor website you can get a contractor discount when you take out business insurance. Please use Code CAUK10 at checkout and you will a receive great 10% contractor discount on policies from one of the best contract insurance providers in the UK.
Final thoughts
It is key to be aware of pre-trading expenses when you start your own UK contracting business. These are expenses before incorporation and both company directors and self-employed people will incur these. As a result, you should record any pre-trading expenditure and incorporation costs when you set up your company. You can then save tax when you make a claim for these later on.
Therefore, to sum up:
- When you run a company, the expenses will show as costs in your company’s first set of financial accounts.
- When you are self-employed, you will include the costs in the self-employment section on your personal tax return.
As a final note, we hope this guide will be a good help when you start your own new business. We explain what to think about when you claim your pre-incorporation expenses.
Link to Contractor Advice UK group on
