I'm new here and have searched fairly thoroughly through this forum and elsewhere online to find the answers I need but, alas, I can't find any discussion relevant to my situation. I really hope someone here can help.
My situation in brief:
1. I'm British, sponsoring my non-EU spouse for ILR. We have 3 British kids. We have all the documents we need with only the income requirement posing a problem.
2. In the past 12 months I've worked: as a salaried employee in a permanent position; a salaried employee for a limited company which I am the 100% owner of; a salaried employee for another company in a temporary (2 months) position; and as a self-employed hourly paid worker (very briefly). My spouse started full-time work a month ago earning 12k (yes, well under minimum wage but that's another discussion).
3. I've earned over £18600 in the past 12 months and any rolling 12-month period since 2013 (the year my wife entered)
4. My limited company has just completed 12 months' trading so I will soon be able to provide the 'full financial year' company documentation required.
The problem is this: My company's first financial year runs Sept 2017 to Sept 2018, but the SA302 self-assessment document HAS to be for the tax year which runs April to April.
Section 9.3.4 states:
If a person has different financial years, e.g. because they are both self-employed and a director or other employee (or both) of a specified limited company, their income from the self-assessment tax return and Company Tax Return financial years cannot be combined to meet the financial requirement. Including income from differently based financial years would not be a fair or accurate way of calculating a person’s annual income. This restriction also applies where a person and their partner have income based on different financial years: the application must rely on both partners’ eligible income in the same financial year(s).
I can understand the reason for this ruling but it leaves me in a terrible situation because I need to rely on both salaried and self-employed (as a director/employee of my own company) income in order to demonstrate I've earned over £18,600.
Does anyone know of a way around this? I'm devastated because until a few days ago I thought we would be fine on the income side of things, and now, having drilled deep into the rules, it seems that we are not
