It’s a factor of life that at some point, you’ll leave self employment – either through moving onto a new job (employment), retirement, or through other ways.
However, you’ll need to ‘close down’ your business appropriately and ensure that records are updated for this.
Informing Slimming World
You should inform Slimming World formally, in writing, and ensure you receive a response. Any accounts you hold would need finalising, and all materials returned to them. Afterwards, you’ll receive a notification from Slimming World to confirm your account is closed.
When you have run your final group, you’ll have limited time to access OurWorld to download your group franchise accounts. Ensure you plan time to download all Monthly PFS Summaries and Weekly Reports (for your accounts) as you’re legally required to keep a copy of these for your tax return and record keeping.
Selling/Closing down
You may have some items which other colleagues would like, and therefore a sale would be made. You should provide receipts for all items which are sold, and log details of these as Income for your Tax Return. The receiving consultant would log these as expenses.
You can find example templates for invoices/receipts within your MalgraBooks Client Dashboard which can be used to keep a record of these transactions.
If you sell items to non-consultants (for example, if you were to sell a printer you bought for the business to a private seller), you would also need to log this as income.
Informing HMRC
One essential part is informing HMRC – this should be when you end all self employment related activity.
To do this, you need to fill out a short form on HMRC’s website. They’ll still expect you to complete a tax return for the final year of your self employment – don’t forget!
Example:
Claire ends her self employment on 24 October 2022.
She finalises all her accounts, and informs HMRC that her self employment has finished.
She must send her Tax Return for the 2022/23 financial year, and pay any tax due by 31 January 2024.
In the final tax return, you’ll also be able to provide the final date of when your business operated – this is ideally when the last ‘business transaction’ took place (i.e. disposal of your last items, etc).
Informing MalgraBooks
If you’re a MalgraBooks Essentials member, you don’t need to take any action as your tax return is processed by yourself and you’ll need to inform HMRC as per the above guidelines.
If you’re an Advanced or Premium member, please ensure you contact your MalgraBooks Support Team to advise of the date when your self employed ended, so that this can be updated on our systems and also reported to HMRC.
If applicable to your package, we’ll issue a ‘disengagement’ letter to identify when our service ends with you, and ensure any recurring payments are cancelled appropriately at the end of any billing period.
You can continue to access your account online for a limited period after your account ends – we’ll write to you to advise of this.