As well as being able to claim compensation for the pain, suffering, and inconvenience caused, you can claim for losses and expenses too. They are often referred to as Special Damages, and they can include things like lost earnings, treatment costs, care costs, travel expenses, and all sorts.
Being able to recover these losses is all down to evidence though – so how does it affect you if you are self employed?
Lost earnings are normally one of the easiest things to claim for. We can normally provide wage slips to indicate how much you have lost as a result of being off from work due to an injury. But being self employed means that you do not normally have wage slips to prove your earnings.
The defendant will normally refuse to pay any compensation to you for a loss unless you can prove the loss. So we need documentation and records to show how much you have lost as a self employed individual.
This can normally be achieved through the use of:
- Tax returns to show your income
- Three years of profit and loss accounts
- Any documentation in relation to contracts that you any have been unable to fulfil
- Any diaries or other personal records that can assist
The tax returns and three years of profit and loss accounts are normally accepted as the very minimum. If you do not have this, expect to face significant difficulties in recovering self employed lost earnings.
The burden of proof is always on you. There is normally not an accepted excuse for not having accounts or tax return information. If you pay your taxes and report your income to the HMRC, as is required by law, you and the HMRC ought to have records of this. We can use this to help calculate losses.
So the simple answer is yes – you can recover lost earnings even if you are self employed. But it isn’t as easy sometimes unless you have the right documentation to prove what exactly you have lost.
