Running it
A laptop used for two things is a cost split two ways
Claiming all of something you half-use is the most common careless error in a first return.
Guides on Running it: The admin that turns income into a trade
The general principle across tax systems is that a cost with both work and personal use is deductible in the work proportion only, and the proportion is yours to determine and justify. That covers almost everything a rating earner buys: the laptop runs the job and then plays films, and the broadband serves the whole household.
In the UK, GOV.UK's guidance on self-employed expenses gives the example of a £200 phone bill containing £70 of business calls, of which only the £70 can be claimed. Rules vary by country, and none of this is advice for yours.
Why the full claim is the common error
It is rarely dishonest. It is usually someone reasoning that they would not have bought the microphone without the work, and concluding the microphone is therefore a work cost.
The counterfactual is not the test in most systems. Actual use is. A microphone bought for the work and used for the work eighty per cent of the time is an eighty per cent cost even though the reason for buying it was entirely the work.
The reason this matters more than the money involved is what it signals. A return where every mixed item is claimed at one hundred per cent is a pattern that invites a question, and answering that question costs far more time than the difference in the deduction ever saved.
What a defensible split looks like
Defensible does not mean exact. It means you can say, in a sentence, how you arrived at the number.
| Item | A basis that holds | A basis that does not |
|---|---|---|
| Laptop | Logged or estimated hours over a representative period | "Mostly work" |
| Phone | Proportion of billed usage or a counted sample | The whole bill |
| Broadband | Hours of work use against household use | Half, because it feels fair |
| Room costs | Floor area and hours used, where the system allows it | A round guess |
| Microphone | Recording jobs against personal use | Full, because it was bought for this |
The pattern is that every good basis is a measurement of something and every bad basis is a feeling. A two-week usage log, done once, supports a percentage for a whole year and takes almost no time. Write down the method next to the number when you record it, because the method is what you will have forgotten by the time anyone asks.
Round numbers are fine, invented precision is not
Nobody expects 63.4 per cent. A sensible round figure with a stated basis is normal and is what most professionals produce.
What is not fine is a precise-looking number with no derivation, which reads worse than a round one because it implies a calculation that does not exist. If your basis is "I counted my jobs for a fortnight and it came to about a third of my laptop hours", then a third is your number and that sentence is your justification.
Capital items behave differently
Larger purchases are frequently treated over several years rather than deducted at once, under whatever the local system calls allowances or depreciation, and the apportionment then applies to each year's portion rather than to the purchase.
Thresholds for what counts as large differ enormously between countries, and this is the point in a first return where a professional earns their fee in a single answer. The case for one early conversation rests mostly on questions of this shape, where the rule is cheap to apply and expensive to guess.
Changing use, and things bought before you started
Two situations come up and both have ordinary answers.
Use changes. The laptop that was a quarter work in the first year is three quarters work in the second, and the honest treatment is a different percentage in each year rather than one figure carried forward for convenience.
Things bought before you started trading are often brought in at a value at the point they entered the business rather than at what you paid, in many systems. Which means the receipt from three years ago is not necessarily what matters, and a record of what the item was worth when the work started may be.
Keeping this to a two-minute annual job
The apportionment itself is quick if the inputs exist.
Keep the purchase documentation, which is the argument of receipts that actually prove something. Keep a note of the basis alongside the percentage. Review the percentages once a year at the same time you reconcile, so the whole business side of this happens in one sitting rather than four, as in the annual cycle.
What is worth buying at all
Apportionment only matters for things you should have bought.
Whether a piece of measurement equipment is doing anything a phone does not is a gear question rather than an accounting one, and Measure My Cock covers what actually changes a reading. Lighting and camera decisions have a similar shape, in that most of the improvement comes from the free half, and Penis Rater's treatment of photographs is the honest version of that. What a buyer is paying for, when they choose a person over a tool, is judgement rather than kit, which is the consistent message of Rate Penis on commissioning.
The equipment that changes your income on Rate Cock is whatever raises the quality of a delivered assessment, and the formats that reward it are listed on the judges page.
The number you are choosing is a proportion of a cost, and the cost is usually smaller than the hour you would spend optimising it. Pick a basis you can defend in a sentence, write the sentence down, and move on.