Self assessment expenses - billing date or payment date?
Unless you're running a self-employed business with a significant turnover (more than £150k), you are entitled to use cash basis accounting for your tax return, which means you would put the date of transactions as the payment date rather than the billing date or the date a debt is incurred. For payments which have a lag, e.g. a cheque that needs to be paid in or a bank transfer that takes a few days, you might also need to choose between multiple payment dates, e.g. when you initiated the payment or when it took effect. You can pick one as long as you're consistent: You can choose how you record when money is received or    paid (eg the date the money enters your account or the date a cheque   is written) but you must use the same method each tax year.
"Well, I answered a very similar question ""Credit card payment date"" where I showed that for a normal cycle, the average charge isn't due for 40 days. The range is 35-55, so if you want to feel good about the float just charge everything the day after the cycle closes, and nothing else the rest of the month. Why is this so interesting? It's no trick, and no secret.  By the way, this isn't likely to be of any use when you're buying gas, groceries, or normal purchases. But, I suppose if you have a large purchase, say a big TV, $3000, this will buy you extra time to pay. It would be remiss of me to not clearly state that anyone who needs to take advantage of this ""trick"" is the same person who probably shouldn't use credit cards at all. Those who use cards are best served by charging what they can afford to pay at that moment and not base today's charges on what paychecks will come in by the due date of the credit card bill." Assuming you are Resident Indian. As per Indian Income Tax  As per section 208 every person whose estimated tax liability for the year exceeds Rs.   10,000, shall pay his tax in advance in the form of “advance tax”. Thus, any taxpayer   whose estimated tax liability for the year exceeds Rs. 10,000 has to pay his tax in   advance by the due dates prescribed in this regard. However, as per section 207, a   resident senior citizen (i.e., an individual of the age of 60 years or above) not having any income from business or profession is not liable to pay advance tax.   In other words, if a person satisfies the following conditions, he will not be liable to pay advance tax:   Hence only self assessment tax need to be paid without any interest. Refer the full guideline on Income tax website "I think your confusion comes from the negative impact when a creditor writes off your bad credit and ceases attempting to collect it. ""Chargebacks"" as you call them are an attempt to undo fraudulent charges on your card, whether from stolen credit card info or from a merchant who is using shady business practices. For what it's worth, if you joined on December 20, January 20 seems like a reasonable date for the next billing cycle, with the December 31 date reflecting the fact that their system couldn't automatically bill you the day you joined. I also think it's reasonable for you to ask them to refund the bill for the second month if you do not plan to use their gym further. So the dispute seems like a reasonable one on both sides. Good luck." While I'm not an accountant, this is how I do this for my personal   accounting: Note, if you don't want the expense to take effect right away meaning   it'll affect your Profits, then the transaction date here needs to be   something in the future, then when you hit that date and the bill is   still not paid, you just unpost the bill and repost again with a new   date . So you end up with something like the following:   4. Now you post the invoice to Liabilities:Accounts Payable:The Cable Company, the invoice due date should reflect what you had in the invoice. This is important as gnucash will warn you that your bill is due if you want to pay it every time it starts:  When you're ready to pay the bill, just find the bill and click pay invoice. If it's already paid and you imported transactions from your bank, find the transaction then right click and click assign as payment then choose your invoice. Note: I've being using this to also record cheques that are given to   people but not cashed yet. I hope that helps. Suppose you have been paying interest on previous charges in the past. Your monthly statement is issued on April 12, and (since you just received your income tax refund), you pay it off in full on April 30.  You don't charge anything to the card at all after April 12.  Thus, on April 30, your credit card balance  shows as zero since you just paid it off.  But your April 12 statement billed you for interest only till April 12.  So, on May 12, your next monthly bill will be for the interest for your nonzero balance from April 13 through April 30. Assuming that you still are not making any new charges on your card and pay off the May 12 bill in timely fashion, you will finally have a zero bill on June 12. What if you charge new items to your credit card after April 12? Well, your balance stopped revolving on April 30, and that's when interest is no longer charged on the new charges. But you do owe interest for a charge on April 13 (say) until April 30 when your balance is no longer revolving, and this will be added to your bill on May 12. Purchases made after April 30 will not be charged interest unless you fall off the wagon again and don't pay your May 12 bill in full by the due date of the bill (some time in early June). I would talk to your HMRC tax office they do have guidance on this issue here  http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/working/intro/employed-selfemployed.htm Source on GOV.UK You may be able to get tax back for some of the bills you have to pay because you have to work at home on a regular basis. You can only claim for things to do with your work, eg business telephone calls or the extra cost of gas and electricity for your work area. You can’t claim for things that you use for both private and business use, eg rent or broadband access. You don’t need to provide records for claims of up to £4 per week (£18 per month). For claims over £4 per week you’ll need to provide evidence of what you’ve spent. Claims up to £2,500   You must claim using a Self Assessment tax return if you already fill one in. If you don’t already fill in a Self Assessment tax return, and your allowable expenses are under £2,500 for the tax year, fill in form P87 and send it to the address on the form. If you’ve made a successful claim in a previous tax year and your expenses are less than £1,000 (or £2,500 for professional fees and subscriptions), you may be able to make your claim by phone. Claims over £2,500   You must claim using a Self Assessment tax return. Remember that if you make charges as the starting of your billing cycle, then you are receiving a free ~60-day loan. For those that are able to receive high interest rates on their, this means a greater opportunity to earn on their money. For example: Your billing statement ends on Jan 5th. On Jan 6th, you max out your credit card. Your billing statement ends on Feb 5th. Depending on your credit card, your grace period can be anywhere from 20 to 30 days. If your bill is due Mar 7th, you just gave yourself a free 60 day loan. If you have multiple credit cards with different due dates and long grace periods, you can rotate which cards you max out to optimize the money you keep in savings.