Proving self employment. Very worried.

[RasberrySoup]

Hiya Everyone.

 

I am in a pretty complicated situation and I'm very worried about it. I am posting in case anybody has any advice about this sort of thing.

 

I'm self employed and last week I received a letter asking me to prove my self employment. They want all the details from August 13 to November 13th, and they want these details by December 13th.

 

I work several self employed jobs. As an adult phone operator (Have done since 2007) in May this year I opened an etsy shop, and more recently I have started working on another text chat system.

 

Whats making me so nervous is proving my hours worked and income etc. The hours worked on the phone job each week vary from 5 -15 hours weekly. The past few months the hours I've worked have been on the lower end. I have invoices to send them, but the hours 'talk time' shown on them can be very low.

 

I sign into the other text service, but proving hours worked is actually impossible, I have never received any payment from it as I am yet to receive a single text.

 

On etsy. I've only had 8 orders since may (2 refunded).

 

As you can see I am going to have an extremely hard time proving that I've been doing 30 hours and I am so nervous about this that I just don't know what to do.

 

I spoke to them earlier today and the lady told me to 'just go back on the calendar and write down what you think you've done'.........that really doesn't help.

 

I am just wondering if just having the Etsy shop counts? I mean even though I'm not getting that many customers, does having an open shop count towards self employed hours? The same way it would if I had a physical shop that wasn't receiving any customers?

 

I'm pretty stressed about it. I'm worried they are going to say I haven't been doing the hours I should and fine me/stop my tax credits. Or that they'll want me to come in and see them (I'm a very socially anxious person who finds it hard just going to the shop, so I would find it physically impossible to have to do something like that, especially being question etc)

 

So any advice at all would be amazing at the moment,

 

Thank you

[renegadeimp]

Who did you recieve a letter from? HMRC?

[RasberrySoup]

Who did you recieve a letter from? HMRC?

 

Hiya, Yes it was.

 

Sorry I should have clarified that in the first post.

[mikeymack2002]

I assume these calls are incoming only, therefore the amount of time you can accurately state will be an estimate anyway. The only way to keep a full track of your calls is to record them. This would give you the amount of time in the call. Apart from that this could be difficult.

[ericsbrother]

Are you claiming tax credits and is this why they are contacting you?( appears to be the case) Have you registered with HMRC as self-employed and got your UTR? If not they will be wanting to know how you operate/claim to be self-employed. This will be how many hours per week, turnover, profit/loss etc. You should be OK in the first year as it will be guesswork and they accept this but after a year they want to see some figures that tally with your self assessment tax return.

[RasberrySoup]

I am registered self employed and have my UTR and I am receiving working tax credits (have done since 2011)

 

I've been self employed since 2007, this is the first time they've done anything like this. If I had of had some kind of prior warning to keep a record of when I'm 'logged in' to the system etc. I could have done that (If fact I will do that from today) but as it stands at the moment, I don't have what they want.

 

Hence my anxiety about what I'm going to do.

[ericsbrother]

i was self employed for 8 years and never heard a peep from them regarding proof of income, receipts, invoices etc so can only assume that whatever they say will be an advisory thing at this stage and ask to to keep records for the future. They cannot really disagree with what you tell them as there are no records they can pore over to say otherwise.

[impecunious]

When you're self-employed, work related activity can consist of: updating/maintaining records, market research, creating copy for website/blog/advertising, business networking, design/production of samples, keeping accounts, reporting to HMRC/Council (if claiming benefits), online research ..... travelling to see potential clients .... the possibilities are endless. All this on top of any actual hours spent "working" on the phone/texts/making crafts.

 

 

HMRC may need to be convinced you're self-employment is "commercially viable" with a view to making a profit. Especially in light of the minimum income floor for self-employed.

 

 

Imp