Selfsufficientish.com

Hi! :) I've had chickens for the last year or so, but the question has only sprung into my head now so thought I'd ask before anything came of it - I sell the eggs I don't use to people locally as I always have way more eggs than I'd ever use, but can't bear to get rid of the chickens. It's never been a huge amount of money but there's always been more than I spend on the chickens monthly (generally - a few months back it was put towards a new pen and some nicer fencing for them). I was wondering if this money counts as income? I've been looking at this tax calculator (https://www.income-tax.co.uk/) and it says everything together puts me extremely close to the higher tax band. Should I be worried about this, or will it be fine if I leave it? Was hoping someone else here would have been in a similar situation. I don't do it as a business (or at least I don't intend to!) and don't make a huge amount of money from it, but I can imagine it's something the government would want a part of. Hope to hear from someone soon :)

I'm guessing it does count as income if you have a lot of hens/eggs, but you need to weigh up your full year's expenditure against the income from eggs - assuming they don't lay all year but you still need to feed, house and pay vet's bills etc. Unless you're running a full scale commercial operation I don't think the tax man will be chasing you for a few excess eggs.

Simple answer is yes it should be declared as income. I'd happily just paid PAYE for most of my working life until a couple of redundancies found me self employed. We soon leant about income and expenditure and as GA says there is an awful lot that can be put against income. Not only feed and pens but your time in looking after the birds , and don't forget those wellies and overalls you have to wear in the mucky pen and the hand cleanser you have to use afterwards and the laundry bills for washing the towels and overalls . You'll probably find out they are "costing" more than the income they generate . Of course if one wants to be just on the slightly "naughty" side chickens don't have counters to record how many eggs they lay and I very much doubt people buy those eggs by BACS payments or cheques so if a few dozen went "overlooked" no one would be any the wiser . I do seem to recall somewhere in the back of my mind that there are specific rules governing egg producers and specifically small egg producers that have low volume production levels . Martins money tips could very well have the exact details , might be worth checking there .

There are rules about profitable hobbies: they are allowed but not to tax dodge levels

I have one friend who has found what may be termed a loophole for selling food. We are both re-enactors and several years ago I built a portable bread oven which I unfortunately don't use now but my friend now has one she uses. She came up with the idea of pastries and pies and thought about selling them. Of course food hygiene regulations are pretty stringent and doing it all in a field on wooden surfaces , cooking with firewood and having the ashes in the same compartment as the food , with limited washing facilities was always going to be awkward. However , she discovered that selling to a closed group solved a lot of problems. She has a Facebook group which is easy enough to join and as long as she sells only to those people everything is apparently fine. I know that's not directly answering the question about tax but if that question did ever come up there would be so much she could put against it that she'd probably end up with a rebate. I know from personal experience just how much can be earned and just how little tax can be paid without even getting into the realms of tax avoidance or rather tax evasion.