Trivial benefit examples

[tbon]

Hi All,

I work as an IT contractor through my limited company and I'm the only director. The festive season approaching, I have a couple of questions re trivial benefits.

• Can I buy myself a few bottles of wine (costing less than £50) paid by the company as trivial benefit and consider it tax deductible?
• Can a family dinner (with partner and kids, costing less than £50 per head, but more than £50 altogether) be considered as trivial benefit and be tax deductible?

As far as I understand none of these are considered as benefit in kind and doesn't have to be reported on P11D. On the other hand these purchases are tax deductable for the company. Is my understanding correct or am I missing a point somewhere?

One more: Can the company reclaim VAT after trivial benefit expenses?

Thank you!

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

Have a read here

https://www.gov.uk/expenses-and-benefits-trivial-benefits

https://www.gov.uk/expenses-benefits-social-functions-parties

 

[tbon]

Nicola, thanks for your reply. I've read all of that, and even other HMRC documents where they provide some examples. But as I'm not an accountant, I'm not very confident at applying these rules. As far as I understand, the examples I gave in my original post all fit in the trivial benefit category. Would you agree with that? It sounds a bit too good to be true, but that seems to be the case. And I didn't find any clear reference regarding the VAT.