Two-line accounts difficulty

HMRC increased the threshold for two-line accounts from £15 000 to £30 000 with effect from 2008-09. However anyone trying to complete a client's self-assessment return on this basis is likely to have had the return rejected when filing online.

In essence page SES1 of the form has a heading 'Allowable business expenses' and then explains that if annual turnover is under £30 000 the taxpayer can just put total expenses in box 19 rather than filling in the whole section.

In fact this does not work when filing online and the return will be rejected.

HMRC have suggested the following workarounds either:

• fill in boxes SSE10 to SSE14; or
• the total expenses in both SSE10 and SSE19.

This problem was advised to software developers and has been noted on their section of the HMRC website.

Some developers have included...