Strange request from solicitor

is this legal?-show rental income as 2 seperate businesses?

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A client is in receipt of income from several residential properties he rents out, when the client came over to me a number of years ago, some of the rental income was being received via a business bank account and some in cash. However all this income was shown under the rental income pages of the tax return. i asked the question if this was acceptable on Aweb and the consensus was that it was and i continued following the same format.

I have now had a call from a solicitor saying the client needs to prove all his income for last year for immigration purposes. Under some Home Office rules they will only consider income that was banked and despite having tennacy agreements etc they will only accept money either paid directly into the bank or money that he paid into the bank. The solicitor is asking accounts to be seperatley prepared for the rental income that was received into the business bank account as a self employed venture and in order to "comply" with tax law to show the cash rent received only as rental income in the property pages. Other than the client having to pay class 4 if i did this i am having moral issues with it.

Can fellow readers advise or comment if this is ethical and legal?

 

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By RWACEM
13th Apr 2018 13:45

What you have done is correct and what the Solicitor is asking is nonsense. By all means you could prepare separate rent statements for bank and cash (to satisfy Immigration) but the total goes on the property pages as you have done.

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By Paul D Utherone
13th Apr 2018 14:01

There's a longer thread with this question, and a few more answers, here - https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/any-answers/ethical-dilemma-3

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