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.
We also know that members may choose to move to other providers as their business grows, or their needs develop outside of the scope of our services.
Either way, this article explains what happens next and what you’ll need to do to ensure you stay compliant with HMRC and understand the changes to your account.
Leaving Self Employment
There’s a few steps you’ll need to do to ensure your self employment formally ends, and we’ll go through some key items here.
Slimming World Contract
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 in your business accounts. The receiving consultant would log these as expenses.
You can find example templates for invoices/receipts within your MalgraBooks Member 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 July 2024.
After finalising all of her accounts, Claire informs HMRC that their self employment has finished.Claire must send her Tax Return for the 2024/25 financial year, and pay any tax due by 31 January 2026.
In your tax return, the final date of when your business operated – this is usually when the last ‘business transaction’ took place (i.e. disposal of your last items, etc) – is registered against the financial details for that self employed role.
Leaving 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 on a Managed Accounts service, 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 on your final tax return. You’ll still need to let HMRC know through the form above.
We’ll continue as normal until the end of the financial year, and then prepare the tax return as we would usually do – after submission of this, your account and relationship with MalgraBooks comes to an end.
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 contractual billing period.
Accessing your data
Once your final tax return has been prepared (or submitted), access to our systems will be limited – however historical data will be available to view.
In line with ICO and GDPR laws, and also for our supervision by HMRC, we hold information on members for a maximum period of 7 years from the submission deadline for the relevant financial year. After this date, any records kept by MalgraBooks will be destroyed.
You’ll be able to access your reports and documents during this time. If you’re unable to locate a specific item, please contact our team.
Moving to a different Bookkeeper or Accountant
If you’re moving to a different provider, please let us know the full details of the relevant individual or company.
We’ll need you to complete a short form to allow us to provide your information to this new entity, and confirm which information you’d like us to provide electronically.
Confirmation Letters
If you need a confirmation letter for your final year of business, we can provide this up to 12 months following the tax year end. After this period, we can only issue letters under specific circumstances, and a charge may apply.