Starting your own website - profits

[Nigglenaggle]

Have a domain and am in the process of design. My question is a legal one, wasn't sure where to put it. I plan to sell advertising on my site. I accept that this is likely to only offset the costs involved - the site is for information only and won't be selling anything, I don't expect to make a profit. Do I still need to declare any money I make from ads for tax??? As really won't be making money overall from the site, but putting it all back through?

[lljkk]

If you have any earned income you declare it to IR, even if you won't owe any tax. I was filing self assessment for 5 yrs due to income from Google Adsense.

[12thmonkey]

i would say this falls under other sources of income and you would be subject to tax based on your existing bracket.
ie. currently you are on 20% upto 40k and you earn 30k... this means you can rake in 10k from the site and be subject to 20% tax on it like you would if it were your normal wage. anything over the difference woud be subject to the rate applicable over that amount. ie 25% 41K to 45k.. make sense...

hosting is so cheap nowadays so i guess were talking 50 to 100 a year so if its likely to cost you more to run than you would make i wouldn't stress it, however if you makes buckets and it still costs more you could use the spend to offset against your main income. i would seek tax advice if you think that is likely.

[Nigglenaggle]

OK. Is that simple to do? I was self - employed back in the day and just used to get an accountant to handle it all but have gone back to the ease of employeehood since then so not sure how it works alongside a normal paycheck

[MaryMotherOfCheeses]

I think you'd be classed as a sole trader so you would need to do a self assessment and declare any income and expenditure you've had.

I think a number of sole traders don't make profit at first, they invest back into the business, but it still counts as income.