Will she now get in trouble for this ? (SE question)

I don't think she has to do all three forms surely?
She's only done the SA100 form but I did think she needed the CWF1 also so will help print that out for her now and she can fill it in tomorrow.
Someone mentioned on another forum that she needed her gateway code but as I said, she couldn't verify it? Keep being told conflicting information and she is really worried about getting a fine for doing it incorrectly.

I think you are getting yourself into a panic.

Form CWF1 is the form to notify HMRC of a new business but if earnings have been small and covered by the £1,000 trading allowance you don’t have to register until they exceed that amount.

If 2024/25 was the first year she earned over £1,000 then fill in the forms online … or send the paper ones to:

Self Assessment
HM Revenue and Customs
BX9 1AN

The CWF1 is to register for self-assessment, SA100 is the main self-assessment return and the SA103 is the form to declare income from self employment.

It is straightforward and little different to declaring tax on savings where there is a tax free personal savings allowance of £1,000.

It’s up to you if you use an accountant but they are going to charge you far more than the small amount of tax she is going to have to pay. You said up thread it was “1,25.87” by which I assume you mean £1,257.

If her total income is less than £50,270, she’s got £51.40 tax to pay (£1257-£1,000 * 20%) by 31 January 2026.

Please stop worrying over little more than £50.

No, that isn't the case.
As I mentioned before, this is the first year that she has earnt more than 1k on self earnings. Her PAYE account has never been impacted by self earnings.

*if she's used her personal allowance

Silverbrooks

She doesn't need an accountant. She's just being paid a liitle bit of money for work that she does. There isn't anything complicated about it.

If she has costs e.g. getting to and from her babysitting gigs that her employers aren't reimbursing her for, she could claim her travelling expenses against her income but those costs are unlikely to exceed £1,000.

She isn't in trouble unless she has failed to declare income over £1,000 for years before 2024/25. If she has failed to declare, then, she could be charged tax plus interest and penalties for those years.

If this is the first year her earnings have exceeded £1,000, all she has to do is register by 5 October 2025 and be ready to pay the small amount of tax on the excess over £1,000 by 31 January 2026.

She's also paying PAYE so the self employed £1000 allowance would be subject to tax she's used her personal allowance with her PAYE salary? So she could possibly owe tax on previous years?

My main question was about her not registering to be self employed.
This is confusing as there is a form (CWF1) does she fill that in also?
It says you have to declare all SE earnings 4 months after you started and if you don't, you get fined. Yet she wasn't making enough at the time to register.
It's all such a mindfield and neither of us are good with technology which doesn't help.
Even if it seems a waste of money, a one off fee for an accountant is surely worth it for peace of mind.

Silverbrooks that's interesting, thank you.
I was basing what I said on my time as a care worker, where I used to drive from home to different people's houses.
One private care agency didn't pay us any travelling expenses (or time), but when I worked for social services they paid for the journeys between the clients houses but not from and to home at either end of each shift.

I was self-employed as a registered childminder as well so I was already submitting a self assessment tax return each year.
I explained the scenario regarding the private care company travel expenses, or lack of, to the Inland Revenue and they accepted an allowance of 45p a mile for the journeys between the clients.

Even as a self-employed person you can't claim travelling expenses from home to your place of work, or back again.

Not necessarily.

While that may be the case if work in carried out at the same locations in a regular pattern, it wouldn’t be correct for someone providing a service to multiple clients which may be the case here. She would be classed as an itinerant trader. The business address would be the home address.

Take the example of a mobile hairdresser who visits her clients in their homes. Her travel between home and her customers would be regarded as business travel and so the expenses would be allowable for tax purposes. If she has more than one client a day, her travel costs relating to journeys between clients’ houses would also be allowable.

It's probably irrelevant here in view of the small amount of income. The £1,000 trading allowance is likely to be be advantageous.

If she has costs e.g. getting to and from her babysitting gigs that her employers aren't reimbursing her for, she could claim her travelling expenses against her income but those costs are unlikely to exceed £1,000.

Even as a self-employed person you can't claim travelling expenses from home to your place of work, or back again.
If the young lady drove from home to a family's house to babysit for the afternoon, then drove to another family's house to babysit for the evening, then drove home, the only journey she can claim as a direct business expense is the one between the two families' houses.

What she needs to do though is to bear her travel costs in mind when she quotes her fees for babysitting and factor in her time to allow for this.
As an example: if she babysits for a family for three hours, and they live half an hour drive away (and half an hour back), she needs to charge for four hours, or make sure the amount she charges for the three hours equates to this.

David49

If the business is likely to remain at that level try to keep it below £1000, it’s not worth doing a tax return for a few hundred

Why on earth not? It’s a simple job to fill in form SA103 for something as straighforward as this.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67dbece80298101d2d67118f/SA103F_2025.pdf

Whatever the young woman earns, if her marginal tax rate is 20% she’ll still keep 80%.

Even if she’s earning just £300 over the trading allowance why deny herself £240 (a sum by the way that would pay my summer energy bill for four months) just for the sake of ten minutes completing a couple of simple forms?

She doesn't need an accountant. She's just being paid a liitle bit of money for work that she does. There isn't anything complicated about it.

If she has costs e.g. getting to and from her babysitting gigs that her employers aren't reimbursing her for, she could claim her travelling expenses against her income but those costs are unlikely to exceed £1,000.

She isn't in trouble unless she has failed to declare income over £1,000 for years before 2024/25. If she has failed to declare, then, she could be charged tax plus interest and penalties for those years.

If this is the first year her earnings have exceeded £1,000, all she has to do is register by 5 October 2025 and be ready to pay the small amount of tax on the excess over £1,000 by 31 January 2026.

If the business is likely to remain at that level try to keep it below £1000, it’s not worth doing a tax return for a few hundred

It's babysitting that she does .
Should have gone for an accountant, but too late now.

It doesn't sound as though she'll be in trouble. If she's selling & has been for several years, surely she can state that she didn't expect to be above the £1k allowance this year or any year, so hasn't registered till now.
For someone with another PAYE job, that sounds true & as other posters have said, it's such a tiny amount & HMRC are so stretched, I can't imagine she'd be penalised.

Since 6 Aprl 2017, there has been a £1000 tax-free trading allowance.

www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-free-allowances-on-property-and-trading-income

If your annual gross trading income, from one or more trades or businesses is more than £1,000 you can use the tax-free allowance, instead of deducting any expenses or other allowances.

If your expenses are more than your income, it may be beneficial to claim expenses instead of the trading allowance.

If your gross income for a tax year is more than £1,000, you must register for Self Assessment by 5 October in the following tax year - so for 2024/25 that would be 5 October 2025. The tax will be payable by 31 January 2026.

If this source of income is ongoing it’s possible that HMRC will want payments on account for 2025/26 and subsquent years.

Someone on the payment on account system for 2024/25 would have paid instalments on estimated profits on 31 January 2025, 31 July 2025 and a balancing payment on 31 January 2026 when the final profits are known.

With such a small amount involved, HMRC may made a coding adjust for 2025/26 for profits for this current year.

The Low Incomes Tax Reform Group has useful pages on this including on NIC:

www.litrg.org.uk/tax-nic/how-tax-collected/self-assessment-and-tax-returns/self-assessment-tax-payments#2

www.litrg.org.uk/working/self-employment/paying-tax-self-employed-profits-and-making-payments-account

www.litrg.org.uk/working/self-employment/nic-self-employed#7

She's had this side gig a few years but unless you earn 1k or over, you don't need to declare it.
Yet it's confusing as it also says you can be fined if you don't declare being SE within 4 months of starting.

I wonder if an accountant doing it from the start would have been easier...

Looking on the HMRC website, it says you don’t have to register as self employed until the October of your second year of business.

She thought filling in the form would be enough.

In previous years she's earned below 1k so not had to declare it, this year is different so she now needs to become self employed

Why didn't she register as self employed? Was it just an oversight?

She earnt 1,25.87 to be precise.
She has filled out the form declaring it but hasn't actually registered as self employed if that makes sense.

Is it online earnings? One is allowed to earn £1,000 from online earnings such as eBay without paying tax. There are posters on here who deal with tax, who I expect can give you an answer, but I believe you don't have to register as self-employed if you earn less than £1,000 as a sole trade - I'm not sure how that works if it's an additional job.

If it's only slightly over £1,000, all she can do is include an explanatory note and pay any tax which is due, which won't be much. I would have thought HMRC have better things to do than hassle for not registering as self-employed.

I think it may depend on how many hours your DD is employed for? If she's in a full time contracted post then yes, she will have to declare any untaxed income.