Basis periods if trading begins April

WaHazlehurst94

Hello,

If a business starts their accounts in April, but ends them in a different month, is the first basis period April - next April? I only ask because it occurs to me if a trader starts trading on 01/04/2017 then the next 05/04 is 05/04/2017 which would make only the first month assessable which would then overlap entirely with the next 12 months of trading, but this seems entirely illogical. It would seem to make sense that the first basis period is 01/04/2017 - 05/04/2018, and if the first CAP was 01/04/2017 - 01/06/2018, then the second basis period would be 01/06/2017 - 31/05/2018 with an overlap profit.

This might seem like a strange question but I cannot find any confident resolution of the issue in my textbooks or the reference material and no practice assessment I have ever done sees a business start trading in April. Could someone please confirm? Thank you.

Duchess1

have a look at Business Tax, chapter 1...