Readers' forum : Blast from the past

I have a client who runs a bed and breakfast business in Blackpool and his turnover as a sole trader has always been just below the VAT registration threshold. Until 2013 he also traded as a limited company writing articles and technical pieces for engineering magazines which was his original profession before he bought the B&B. The company was dissolved in 2013.

In 2015 he received a commission from one of the magazines for £4 000 because it had sold one of his earlier contributions on a website and paid him 50% of the proceeds from sales of the pdf copies. He requested that the cheque was made payable to him personally because the company had been disbanded by this time.

An HMRC visiting officer is now saying that this fee should be treated as part of his taxable sales figure for VAT registration purposes ...