Some Questions Regarding Money Paid To Me Online via my website

[mburdett5555]

I am currently in full time employment, but in my spare time, I run a train times website at my personal expense.
My website does have the option for members to purchase, on a one off or subscription basis, various services. This might include:

• SMS message alerts for notifying the user if a service is cancelled etc.
• A subscription access to account upgrades, in that various hidden elements can be unlocked if they pay for a subscription.

Website running costs are in the region of £100 per month, and some months I will go without anyone at all purchasing a subscription or SMS credit pack.
I do have Adsense running, and I do recall setting up some tax related info on there, the majority is a loss, but thats beside the point.

My questions are as follows:

• I have a web form and email on my website, with a point of contact via my privacy policy as per GDPR requirements, but do I need to display my personal address? Ive seen some talk that doing any ecommerce related business online, providing a service, I must have an address disclosed. (eg ive seen some websites claiming the consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 requires an address)
• If I must show an address on my website, can I use a PO Box to hide my personal address? Ive seen that is not allowed for a registered company, but I do not plan to register as a company.
• In the unlikely event that the website does start making a profit, be it through adsense or the subscription model (which is very cheap i might add), and on the assumption that profit is no greater than £1000 per year - the requirements of setting up as a Sole Trader - am I allowed to continue as I am going now?
• Do I need to pay tax on any money that is generated via my site, even if site runnings are at a loss? This article seems to suggest 0% tax on anything below £12k.

Thanks for any advice. Obviously the website running at a loss sounds like a silly idea, but then again any blog or personal website will be at the owners expense regardless of costs. Being in full time employment I can afford to run it at my expense, but I just want to clear the above up, and obviously if I cant hide my personal address, use a PO box or if I need to start paying more tax and therefore increase my losses, i'll just terminate my online subscription and paid services.

 

[japancool]

Do I need to pay tax on any money that is generated via my site, even if site runnings are at a loss? This article seems to suggest 0% tax on anything below £12k.

Yes, you will have to pay tax.

The £12k is your personal tax allowance, meaning that it refers to your total income, both from your regular job and whatever profit you make from running the website. You should sign up for self-assessment.

 

[japancool]

• I have a web form and email on my website, with a point of contact via my privacy policy as per GDPR requirements, but do I need to display my personal address? Ive seen some talk that doing any ecommerce related business online, providing a service, I must have an address disclosed. (eg ive seen some websites claiming the consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 requires an address)
• If I must show an address on my website, can I use a PO Box to hide my personal address? Ive seen that is not allowed for a registered company, but I do not plan to register as a company.

The DSR has been superseded by the Consumer Contracts regulations:

The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013

These Regulations implement most provisions of Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 on consumer rights, amending Council Directive 93/13/EEC and Directive 1999/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and repealing Council Directive...

www.legislation.gov.uk

Schedule 2 outlines the information you must make available to the consumer.

 

[ctrlbrk]

Website running costs are in the region of £100 per month

I will leave more experienced people to reply your business-related queries but 100 GBP/month strikes me as quite steep in terms of running a website.

Any particular reason you pay this much? E.g. do you have a dedicated server?

 

[fisicx]

Agree with @ctrlbrk, that does seem excessive. You can get decent hosting for under tenner each month.

 

[mburdett5555]

Thanks for the replies so far. Yes the website costs £100 due to the number of servers and memory required. It's quite intensive site.
However the AdSense does make some of this back, but not profit. Site gets over 1k users.a day so can't just turn it off.

I'll have a look at the tax thing and address requirements.

 

[Scalloway]

Do I need to pay tax on any money that is generated via my site, even if site runnings are at a loss?

I presume you are doing this as a sole trader, ie you don't have a limited company.

If you are already in employment you presumably pay tax through PAYE. If your site is making a loss when you put the figures on your tax return you may get a refund of tax paid through employment.

Best idea is to get an accountant to look at it.

 

[antropy]

If you're actually making a loss that could reduce your tax bill.

Paul.

 

[fisicx]

Thanks for the replies so far. Yes the website costs £100 due to the number of servers and memory required. It's quite intensive site.

Still seems a lot. 1K per day is tiny. I've got clients getting 100K per day and they don't pay anywhere near that much even for a complex site. Memory is cheap as chips. Even junk shared hosting offers GB memory.

 

[Dillon Lawrence Ltd]

Still seems a lot. 1K per day is tiny. I've got clients getting 100K per day and they don't pay anywhere near that much even for a complex site. Memory is cheap as chips. Even junk shared hosting offers GB memory.

Depends on the setup. Shared hosting is restricted in more ways than resource limits (which are usually crap).

Factor in if he needs a VPS or dedicated server for running a specific server stack that shared hosting wouldn’t offer (E.g for sending SMS).

Then if it’s a VPS he’ll probably need management of some sort for patching and keeping it secure and running. Then add in off site backups and licensing (if required) and that cost doesn’t look so high.

Then also consider the support agreement and SLAs. Good luck getting any decent level of support or timely help paying a tenner a month.

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

I am currently in full time employment, but in my spare time, I run a train times website at my personal expense.
My website does have the option for members to purchase, on a one off or subscription basis, various services. This might include:

• SMS message alerts for notifying the user if a service is cancelled etc.
• A subscription access to account upgrades, in that various hidden elements can be unlocked if they pay for a subscription.

Website running costs are in the region of £100 per month, and some months I will go without anyone at all purchasing a subscription or SMS credit pack.
I do have Adsense running, and I do recall setting up some tax related info on there, the majority is a loss, but thats beside the point.

My questions are as follows:

• I have a web form and email on my website, with a point of contact via my privacy policy as per GDPR requirements, but do I need to display my personal address? Ive seen some talk that doing any ecommerce related business online, providing a service, I must have an address disclosed. (eg ive seen some websites claiming the consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 requires an address)
• If I must show an address on my website, can I use a PO Box to hide my personal address? Ive seen that is not allowed for a registered company, but I do not plan to register as a company.
• In the unlikely event that the website does start making a profit, be it through adsense or the subscription model (which is very cheap i might add), and on the assumption that profit is no greater than £1000 per year - the requirements of setting up as a Sole Trader - am I allowed to continue as I am going now?
• Do I need to pay tax on any money that is generated via my site, even if site runnings are at a loss? This article seems to suggest 0% tax on anything below £12k.

Thanks for any advice. Obviously the website running at a loss sounds like a silly idea, but then again any blog or personal website will be at the owners expense regardless of costs. Being in full time employment I can afford to run it at my expense, but I just want to clear the above up, and obviously if I cant hide my personal address, use a PO box or if I need to start paying more tax and therefore increase my losses, i'll just terminate my online subscription and paid services.

If you are running it as a business you can offset losses made against your earnings from your employment and possibly get a tax refund.

I have several clients who run small businesses as a side line and some are able to offset losses to get tax refunds.