Terms & Conditions

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

We’re currently reviewing the evidence we accept for self employed claimants, as we think we may be being too harsh.

Currently we ask claimants to provide their own books and receipts, unless they can provide accounts by an accountant that we’re happy have been through the same things as we would look at. But it seems like this is more than the Inland revenue ask for and we’re probably causing work for ourselves sorting through it all.

So just wondering what everyone else accepts as evidence?

Any thoughts welcome!

[Anonymous]

Why’s it too harsh? Employed earners have to provide wage slips don’t they, or do they self certify as well? We also ask for books and receipts.

[Anonymous]

Haha, true, true.

The main reason we’re looking at it is to try and make life easier for ourselves. If we can accept lesser evidence, it will hopefully reduce the amount of info we have to trawl through, as some claims stretch into hundreds of pages of documents.

Although we do get a lot of newer claimants saying they haven’t kept say petrol receipts because the Inland revenue doesn’t require them to. So from a customer service point of view, it might be nice too.

We were considering accepting accounts or books without receipts, but informing them that we may do spot audits where we assess random claims more fully, so they should still keep receipts in case. Though I’m not sure if we could get away with that, as it’s essentially treating some customers differently to others.

Here’s another related question. If anyone accepts accountants accounts, do you just accept any old accounts from them? We used to always ask for ‘audited accounts’, but recently quite a few accountants have told us that they are only required to do ‘audited accounts’ for businesses over a certain income and so would rarely if ever do them for our claimants (I forget the figure they quoted, but it was quite high).

[Trevor Kenward]

Well as you can’t insist on having audited accounts then it is up to your
Authority in what format you would consider it is best for obtaining information and evidence in order to determine a claimants self-employed earnings.

We would generally accept on our own pro-forma the amounts stated and those whereby we felt may be high/unreasonable/domestic etc we would query and possibly at that stage ask for reciepts etc.

The level of evidence could also depend on the individual case, the nature of the self-employment, amount of buisness transactions etc.

It has also been suggested that two different forms may be needed – one for taxi drivers; one for the rest.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies so far. I like the idea of only asking for receipts in dubious cases. It’s definitely the receipts that slow things down the most.

[Anonymous]

Hi Carl

We, too, have our own proforma for those who don’t have audited accounts. We then generally ask for the evidence to support one or two of the figures and (if they turn out to be valid) accept the rest.

I have asked a few of our customers in to discuss why they continue as self-employed when apparently making no income from their work.

A discussion with our taxi licensing officer was also very helpful in ensuring we understood reasonable charges in taxi driver’s accounts.

[Stuart Macd]

Just a wee bump

Would anyone mind sharing their pro-forma for self employed

Stuart.macdonald@dundeecity.gov.uk

Thanks in advance

[Author]

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