Carrying forward losses over multiple years: a bug in the self-assessment form?

[JamesHopeful]

Thank you for the reply; I'm glad I'm not the only one. I will just go for that option, as it does seem that it will work.

[Marc007]

Hi James, I have the same issue and I wrote to HMRC and they said that if I had loses from previous years to carry forward then I would have to keep track of them myself. I share your concern about the 2017/18 return showing no loss to carry forward because it auto calculates and then actually entering a value for the 2018/19 return. I don't think that they have given much thought to this TBH and everything is based around the new system of adding the profit on to any of your other earned income and then giving you the 20% tax credit for the finance costs at the end. It also means that any losses from previous years will be quickly used up. There are some examples on HMRC's website and it clearly says that the tax credit should not result in a tax refund. It states that the tax credit will be the lowest value of either the profit, the finance costs or the total income. Hence, if you have zero profit then you will have zero tax credit. If I understand the example correctly it means that we will be able to carry forward the unused finance cost until we eventually go into profit.

See example 4 in this link

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/changes-...g-case-studies

[JamesHopeful]

PS: there is an obvious (although untidy) away around this problem, I realise, which is simply to put £17,337 in the "Loss brought forward used against this year's profit" box, and then I can simply remember to put the £22,680 further carried over loss on my 2018/19 return. However, my worry is that this would look odd to HMRC if they cross-reference the two years' returns.