UKC

As an outdoor instructor, which category in the Self Assessment form would you put your climbing equipment? (hardware, clothes, harnesses etc):

Cost of goods bought for resale or goods used: (optional)

Construction industry (payments to subcontractors): (optional)

Wages, salaries, and other staff costs: (optional)

Car, van and travel expenses: (optional)

Rent, rates, power and insurance costs: (optional)

Repairs and maintenance of property and equipment: (optional)

Telephone, fax, stationery and other office costs: (optional)

Advertising and business entertainment costs: (optional)

Interest on bank and other loans: (optional)

Bank, credit card and other financial charges: (optional)

Irrecoverable debts written off: (optional)

Accountancy, legal and other professional fees: (optional)

Depreciation and loss/profit on sale of assets: (optional)

Other business expenses: (optional)

If using the ‘short form’ tax return then much easier to add all your business related costs up and put the whole lot into Box 20, ‘total allowable expenses’. 

You can do this provided your turnover (sales income) is less than £85k.

HMRC are perfectly happy for you to do this and it saves you having to allocate into the separate boxes. 

If you do want to allocate them all out or for any reason have to do a long form tax return then put them in repairs and maintenance of property and equipment. 

Back in the day, I was a sole trader. I only had to submit a 3 line account. Which is pretty much turnover, costs, profit. However as part of Making Tax Digital (MTD) they now make doing a tax return.

Why make it complicated? Take RedFive advice that they are business equipment and treat as an expense on short form. Job done!

Thanks RedFive.

I'll look at doing total allowable expenses instead.

In reply to CantClimbTom:

Thanks CantClimbTom.

And I agree with you on why make it complicated!

Is your equipment being used exclusively for business use? You may need to calculate a business use percentage rather than just adding the full cost as an expense if not. 

You mean if just out cragging? Staff training, personal development and recce of future training areas! 

And if you overblag it, have a good justification of business use proportions   ready for the tax inspection inquiry.

I think it's just a question of not kicking the ar$e out of it. If you just do a bit of walking leader stuff, your N+1 of mountain bikes isn't really business equipment. If you hold no winter quals, you can only justify so many axes etc.. for personal development use.

Edit. I have had hmrc query stuff, sent off masses of receipts etc.. invoices and receipts are obviously exact. Other stuff I always average down, air on the side of caution. So i sent in everything. In the end I got a tax refund as they said I could have legitimately counted more. But I'd recommend the cautious approach.