[Tony1]

Hi all, a first time poster (apart from the introductions bit!)

Question

Can someone registered as a sole trader go on a business trip, Say to Asia to look into Import/export? for 2 weeks.

How much of this is Taxable?
Why wouldnt they say you just went on a holiday? Would meetings need to be organised and on paper ie: emails? or some other correspondance?

Cheers if you can answer

Tony

[Eagle]

I can see no reason why not. You'd declare the expenses anyway - but keep proof of expenditure in case you're ever investigated.

[consultant]

yes!

What do you mean by 'how much is taxable'? If you mean 'what tax can I claim back', if your are VAT registered, you can claim back all UK VAT incurred.

That I am aware, there are no special allowances that you can utilise.

[James Smith]

Tony,

If you spend money for business purposes it should be tax deductible. That is to say it will be part of your expenditure when you draw up your profit and loss account to work out your profits on which you are taxed.

For foreign travel there are some specific quirks which your accountant will help you with, but the basics are very simple - if you went there on business its deductible. If it was a holiday it wont be. If it was a bit of both things get more interesting but you would need to look at the main purpose of the trip. For example if you went for 2 weeks and spend 12 days selling like mad and 2 days on the beach, 2 days hotel/food etc would be knocked off as this was "private". If on the other hand you spent most of your time traveling around and slotting in a couple of meetings for business, only the additional costs of those meetings would be deductible. Ie extra taxi fares to get there. All your other costs would be private. How to prove all this? Well if its a business trip presumably you will have a stack of emails to prove all the meetings you have set up. Keep them. Keep the iterinery. Keep everything you can. If you are meeting suppliers make sure you keep all the brochures etc. Having "ticked and bashed" expense claim forms by the bucket load when I was training to be an accountant I can assure you its a piece of cake to detect a business trip vs taking the Mrs along and having a good time. You can spot them a mile off from simple things such as the timing of the flights and location of the hotel.

Hope that helps

+ to "consultant" there wont be any UK VAT in an overseas trip...!

Regards,

[consultant]

James,

on some occaisions, if you have organised a some activities through a UK based company, they have been known to charge VAT. This VAT is claimable.

Maybe the OP's choice of words is not correct, but they did ask about tax, not deductables - as you say, any genuine travel expense can be claimed back through the business as a cost.

[Tony1]

Thanks for the replies, Ive been over that way before purely on holidays, And was going over to have a proper look into it, I have no meetings arranged, Or email correspondance.

Its a mixture of Business and Pleasure i was going for, Just as this wasnt going to be a lay on the beach holiday relaxing, More being over there looking at wares and finding suppliers to correspond with when im back.

Im not interested in trying to claim for everything, Just the Main expense being the Ticket price.

[Inzvestor]

Consultant - the only VAT you should have paid is on the transaction or service fee charged by the travel agent.

There is no VAT on flights or taxes