Learning to fly, or thinking of learning? Post your questions, comments and experiences here

Moderator: AndyR

#1635634
Claiming expenses as deductible against tavpxable income and reclaiming VAT are certainly easy to do. Whether you’re entitled to do so is an entirely different matter. Plenty of people do it and plenty get into a lot of bother.

1) you could only claim the expense as deductible and reclaim VAT if the expense is wholly and exclusively for the purpose of a particular “trade”. You’re not entitled to offset income from one trade against expense from another trade
2) You would need to become VAT registered. You would then have to charge VAT on your supplies (services) and would have an additional admin and reporting burden. To get registered, you would also have to convince HMRC that the trade was genuine and that it will deliver a profit
3) if the expense was deemed to be a set up expense, it would not be deductible
4) you’d need to find income to offset expense against
5) whatever you did, HMRC would look at it and say “what does this look like and feel like?”. If it looks and smells like bending the rules then they won’t hesitate to come after you
6) Worst case scenario is you have repay the amounts, get hit with penalties of up to 100% and have to pay interest in amounts claimed.

Pay for advice from a VAT advisor. Lots of accountants would stay away from giving VAT advice given its complexities, so make sure they know what they’re talking about.
By vw-dan
#1636068
Whoa, really surprised at some the responses here because this is in no way as simple as it looks:

Here's the technical guidance:

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manual ... l/eim01220

For the purpose of the exemption in Section 250 ITEPA 2003 (see EIM01210), “work- related training” is defined as any training course or other activity which is designed to impart, instil, improve or reinforce any knowledge, skills, or personal qualities which:

are, or are likely to prove, useful to the employee when performing his/her duties or
will qualify or better qualify the employee to undertake the employment, or to participate in charitable or voluntary activities arising through the employment.

The training must relate to the employee’s current employment or to a “related employment” (see EIM01230).


To my mind, I think you'd really struggle to pull this off