Tax Credit Working Hours

[Suzieb1]

I'm self employed as a dog home boarder. This involves 24 hour care of dogs in my own home, including walking of said dogs. I have administration tasks to carry out and enquiries to attend to so rarely am away from home as policy is to not leave dogs for more than an hour or so. I'm in the process of claiming tax credits as my income is low but due to the nature of the business am finding it difficult to work out how many hours I work - i.e. What is classed as working? Also some weeks I don't have dogs in residence but I still have admin and queries to attend to. Can anyone help me with this?

[Kati]

Re: Tax Credit Working Hours

Hi [MENTION=103931]Suzieb1[/MENTION] and to LB

You should be able to use this to calculate your working hours for WTC - https://www.turn2us.org.uk/Benefit-g...mployed-people

Working Tax Credit

If you are self-employed, it is the number of hours normally performed for payment or expectation of payment.
You should count all the necessary hours needed to run your business, including visiting potential clients, typing up estimates, buying stock, bookkeeping etc.
Tip: Keep a diary to record all the hours you do for your business in case you need to show proof.

[Suzieb1]

Re: Tax Credit Working Hours

Hi @Suzieb1 and to LB

You should be able to use this to calculate your working hours for WTC - https://www.turn2us.org.uk/Benefit-g...mployed-people

Thank you for your reply Kati. I've looked at this already and it didn't really help. I get paid for 24 hour care so should I add together all the days in the year I have dogs? Then do the admin separately on days I don't have dogs? I'm rather confused as you can see.

[Kati]

Re: Tax Credit Working Hours

TBH I'm not quite sure ... that sounds like a reasonable take on it, but I'm unsure how HMRC would view it (sorry). [MENTION=51026]Ula[/MENTION] might be able to help you there (I've tagged her) or you could maybe try getting an appointment with your local CAB to see if they know?

[seduraed]

Re: Tax Credit Working Hours

I think there are several ways to look at this. But the nearest equivalent is human care. The dogs need feeding walking playtime etc. But you you have to be there in case of need. If there is a crisis you deal with it. So all hours you actually do anything related to the businless counts. Whether this is admin or blogging or getting petrol for the car or buying dog food especially if you go to a dedicated supplier . Then I would ring HMRC and ask. Or look up Caersws and see what the rules as this is equivalent.

[ULA]

Re: Tax Credit Working Hours

You need to be able to establish a working pattern of a number of hours over a period of time. If a recognised ‘pattern’ of work can be shown over a period, then it is possible to average hours of work over that period, otherwise hours can be averaged over a full year.