Don't listen to vonhelmet he's wrong. Ask any accountant - you CAN claim the full cost even if you part time use it for gaming. The fact you use it partly for gaming is 100% IRRELEVENT as long as its majority used for business as far as your tax is concerned. Otherwise anyone that, say, used any purely company laptop to email their wife at lunchtime, or put a background of a picture of their daughter on the thing -- would be committing tax fraud!!!!!
Vonhelmet - ask your accountant - computers are different from other goods because of the government madly trying to persuade the UK to become tech savvy basically ...!
I'm sorry, but you're still wrong. He is self employed, and for income tax purposes all expenditure must be pro-rated if there is an element of private use. Now, the revenue will exercise some discretion here, so you're right - the odd email here and there won't matter too much - but once you're talking about even 10% of use being non-business then it should be apportioned.
If he were operating as a limited company, then things would be different, as there is no such concept of private use apportionment. However, even then, if a company were to deduct the cost of a laptop for, say, one of it's directors, then this would almost certainly be treated as a dividend in specie, added back in the tax computation and taxed, and then taxed as dividend income on the director.
The government's push for tech-savviness is also largely irrelevant at this time, as they've long since axed things like the home computing initiative and the first year allowances for computer equipment.
britboy4321 said:
And of course you CAN sell it to yourself for £1 after 3 years as computer depreciation is set at a fixed 33% a year (used to be 100% per year depreciation allowed! the good old days!). Not sure where von got the idea that every laptop on the market is going to be somehow separately valued by the IR, every single year, to ensure businesses are selling them to private individuals for enough money!!! I mean - what?
No, you can't do what you're saying. You can depreciate it as much as you like, yes, though for tax purposes that depreciation is added back and you claim capital allowances instead. At present, it works out the same, thanks to the 100% annual investment allowance, but that's just a happy coincidence. As for selling it to yourself for £1... wrong. This next bit is true even for a company, so pay attention. If you dispose of a fixed asset by way of anything other than a bargain at arm's length (that is - a sale at open market value) then the proceeds introduced in the capital allowances computation are the open market value. You are expected to make a reasonable estimate of this (self assessment y0), and if the revenue do not believe your estimate to be reasonable then they will challenge it.
If you want to know where I got that idea, then it's s61 CAA 2001.
If this weren't the case, then any self employed Joe could buy a laptop "for business", immediately depreciate it by 100%, and then sell it to himself for £1 and claim the deduction via his self employed business.
britboy4321 said:
There is indeed no way the revenue would entertain a claim for shampoo, the claim can still be made though - exactly as I said.
OK, so you got one thing right.
IIRC, Vonhelmet is a CTA...
Correct. I've thus far resisted the tempation to willy wave by scanning in my membership certificate.
Back on topic, for the OP... I've thought about this a touch more and I reckon you could claim the cost of both laptops less the market value of the first laptop at the point at which you bring it out of the business. So, for laptop 1 costing £290, with market value £200 when transferred out, and laptop 2 costing £1,000, you'll claim £1,000 + £290 - £200 = £1,090. This is through a combination of the annual investment allowance and the small pools allowance. I'll check it tomorrow and draw up a quick spreadsheet to show the workings.
/definitely no advice and no engagement here, oh no!
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