Although I am an employee ad exceed the earnings requirement under PAYE as a Director I still have to be assessed as self employed. To that end following the FLR in Oct 2016 I changed the financial year from April - March to Jan - Dec since there woud have been no time to complete 2017/18 accounts before a May visa renewal this year. Althoughthe rules say the profit would be averaged over the last two years I can't see how they would accept earnings averages from April 2016 to March 2017 for a visa application in May 2018. March 2017 would have been the previous accepted accounts.

Now my wife can't pass the Life in the UK test I am going for another FLR and that will put the next visa on Nov 2020. That would put the average over Jan 2018 to Dec 2019 so the date would be 11 months old at the visa application. Now that is clearly within the rules but it shows how bonkers the rules are. I was thinking of changing the financial year again but how old can the profit be and still be acceptable. Is there any guidance. As I said my understaning is that is the average of the last 2 years accepted accounts but that seems daft to me if the data is nearly a year old at the time of the application. Employees clearly have to show earnings up to the month before the application. How can it be that self employed only have to show up to potentially 13 or even 14 months prior to the application.

 

10 hours ago, Trevor1809 said:

Although I am an employee ad exceed the earnings requirement under PAYE as a Director I still have to be assessed as self employed. To that end following the FLR in Oct 2016 I changed the financial year from April - March to Jan - Dec since there woud have been no time to complete 2017/18 accounts before a May visa renewal this year. Althoughthe rules say the profit would be averaged over the last two years I can't see how they would accept earnings averages from April 2016 to March 2017 for a visa application in May 2018. March 2017 would have been the previous accepted accounts.

Now my wife can't pass the Life in the UK test I am going for another FLR and that will put the next visa on Nov 2020. That would put the average over Jan 2018 to Dec 2019 so the date would be 11 months old at the visa application. Now that is clearly within the rules but it shows how bonkers the rules are. I was thinking of changing the financial year again but how old can the profit be and still be acceptable. Is there any guidance. As I said my understaning is that is the average of the last 2 years accepted accounts but that seems daft to me if the data is nearly a year old at the time of the application. Employees clearly have to show earnings up to the month before the application. How can it be that self employed only have to show up to potentially 13 or even 14 months prior to the application.

I am self employed and went through the same as you and will do the same early next year for my wife's first FLR. My accounts finish on the 31st March and when my wife applied for her settlement visa in February 2016 I used my 2014 accounts that finished in March 2015. Most of the bank statements  I used were from 2014 and I only relied on a single years accounts. They are the rules and my wife had no problem getting the visa.

 

If your end of year accounts are March 2018 and your wife is applying in May 2018 you will need those accounts to apply for the visa. As long as your income is more than £18,600 a year you only need one year of accounts. You can rely on one year or an average of two years.

I anticipated the problem 2.5 years ago so I changed to financial year Apr to March to Jan to Dec. The accountant is preparing the accounts ending Dec 2017 now ready for the application in May. If I leave the year as Jan 2019, as you say they are the rules. From Jan 2020 to Nov 2020 I could have been doing nothing and how would they know.

I think I am going to change the year back to April to March or even July to June then go into the Nov application with more recent data.

It doesn't need to be more recent data as long as your accounts are the latest available according to the date your wife applies or the old one runs out.

 

My wife's FLR runs out next April but I am hoping to rely on this years accounts for the visa. I probably won't be able to as I like to submit by courier a couple of days before her visa expires.