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David Jones Shrewsbury Accountant and Founder of Morgan Jones“After nearly three decades of preparing client’s tax returns, I am still occasionally surprised at what seemingly bizarre items individuals claim as a legitimate expense against their profits; so I thought I would share some of them with you.”

1: Barbie Dolls

We had a small private hotel owner who claimed several bills for numerous Barbie and Action Man dolls. I knew the owner had 4 young children and a veritable horde of nephews and nieces so I told him they couldn’t be claimed. He came back to me and stated that he gave them away to people with kids who stayed for 5 or more days, so bingo, they became legitimate expenses against sales.

2: Knitting Needles

I act for a number of musicians and recently the records came in for a client who is a drummer and amongst the receipts were several invoices for knitting needles. In turned out that he had started doing jingles for the local radio station and needed them for a particular sound effect on a drum.

3: Lingerie

We had a client who was a carpenter and in his records were a couple of receipts from Anne Summers, the lingerie shops chain.  We queried it, expecting to disallow, only to find out that it was for the purchase of white gloves that he used in preparing fibreglass hulls for narrowboats.

4: Slimfast and Big Macs

A client who is a minor celebrity had a part-time occupation as a fast-food restaurant critic and claimed the expense of eating out as he was a freelancer. Later he was hired for an airline commercial and was asked to lose some weight first, so he claimed for Slimfast slimming treatment. So in effect he put on weight and lost it again legitimately at HMRC’s expense.

5: Singalongamax
Max_Bygraves_Singalongamax LP cover 65 great sing-a-long songs

Hearing Loss, Not Tax Loss

A small engineering firm’s records contained an invoice for 500 Singalongamax Vol 1 CDs. Intrigued; I asked the obvious question and was told that they were used as “spacers” to go into one the products they manufactured due to size, shape and material, and buying cheap CDs was far cheaper than buying an equivalent product in bulk from normal manufacturing suppliers.

6: Scented Candles

I used to have a client who was a self-employed pole dancer and I was used to expense claims for g-strings, thongs and body oil, but one year she put in a claim for scented candles and expensive bath oils. When I queried this, she said that she needed have a sensuous bath and pamper her body to get herself “in the mood” for her new day-time work on X-rated chat lines.

When I told her that she couldn’t claim for the candles and oils as there was no direct link to her chat-line earnings, she asked if her new “Rampant Rabbit” qualified; I am not a person who embarrasses easily, but I still cringe whenever I recall that meeting when she explained why she thought it should.

7: Daughter’s wedding

Weddings are a 100 million pound a year industry in the UK and they didn’t get that way by being cheap. It stands to reason that if you have to fork out for your daughter’s big day, you’d want any type of tax break you could get. Unfortunately, for a client of mine I had to tell him that by stating on the invitation that the wedding was sponsored by his firm and including a few clients on the wedding list did not mean he could write off the entire event as a business promotion expense. A nice try though!

Do you have an unusual item you would like to claim on your tax return, let us know on our  Facebook page