Any accountants/ tax inspectors about to advise?(boring and trivial)

[chocolatemartini]

What should I do?

For about 15+ years I've been self employed.

About 5 years ago I gave up a lot of the self employed work and got a couple of days of employed work (doing largely the same thing I used to be s/e for)
Since I became mostly employed the remaining self employed work has gradually diminished, mostly due to the fact I have had 2 children and am not chasing the work like I used to. Last year I made a self employed loss because various costs (professional subscription, website fees etc) were greater than the £200 or whatever it was that I earned on a self employed basis.

This year the same- I earned about £200 and have expenses of around £600 (website fees, professional insurances, travel)

How many years can I keep claiming a loss? Does it get categorised as a hobby at some stage? Feel tempted to just say I wasn't self employed last year on the tax return but I do actually want to do it correctly.

For tax purposes you have two sections to complete on your annual return: an employment (PAYE all sorted by your employer you just copy down the figures from your P60 and are unlikely to have any deductible expenses) and your Sch D business. I am in a similar situation but was originally a tax consultant...
As long as you are still doing any self-employed business you ought to include it on your return. If you have a loss then you can either carry it forward to offset against future income or apply to offset it against your employment and get a small repayment of tax.
As for the hobby aspect that is slightly different - could your self-employed business be seen as a hobby? Depending on the nature of the business it is unlikely that HMRC would be bothered. However they are actually nice people if you telephone and ask them! (Always make a note of the date and time you rang and get the name of the person who advised you and what they said though).
Of course HMRC are really not interested in such small beer but life is simpler when you play by the rules. Also one can still diss those who do not pay their taxes and pay their fair share

Ah thank you cdwales I hadn't remembered to look back and check whether anyone was kind enough to read my question through to the end. Yes good idea I'll phone HMRC. I've done the employment sections and self employment sections of the tax return for years now but I gave up my accountant when the self employed earnings went down to almost nothing, and that was fine until I started running the self employed bit as a loss. Then I was a bit confused as to what to put. I filed a loss last year and that got offset I think against my employed earnings, which was a bit of a bonus I wasn't expecting (not much of a bonus but every little counts!) but I felt a bit cheeky doing that again, as surely at some point they'd say please close down your business if it's making a loss ?? Especially if the loss was being offset against tax paid on other jobs.

And yeah, such tiny amounts I'm sure they have much bigger fish to worry about!