I can see it now ....tax man : were you adversely affected during the 3 months after the first payment?
Window cleaner : yes .... I thought I might lose Mrs smith from number 10 spank street later in the year, and I might have lost business in the future.
Tax man: ...... ...... Your books show you were doing pretty good. so you weren’t affected . Il have that money back thank you very much.
Window cleaner : ..... oh , I spent the money on a massive leaflet drop , hot water system and a new van 😢
If that were true then of course it would go in the expense column of your accounts and thus reduce earnings for the year.
Yeh, but the tax man will see expenses increase over the previous years. If you haven't been working for a length of time and adversely affected by Covid19 the running expenses incurred by you should reduce. I refueled my van last week. The previous full tank was the beginning of March.
The tax man will also see a claim under the Annual Investment Allowance when the windie writes off his new van as a claim against tax.
I honest believe that NWH is sounding a genuine alarm. Just be careful. My business was adversely affected when I shut down for 8 weeks. I'm busy as anything now trying to keep up with phone calls to clean dirty windows. Will my turnover suffer in the 2nd quarter of this tax year. Yes, it will a little, but not adversely unless something really unforeseen happens and we have to go back into lockdown.
That word adversely is the problem because everyone will interpret it differently. Its the same a self assessment. We are asked to assess our tax liability on our assessment of our business but the tax man wouldn't usually see our assessment the same way.