From: Anon 
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Subject: Re: Personal income tax - other income
Date: Wed, 03 May 2006 09:03:47 +0100

On Mon, 01 May 2006 19:49:12 +0100, Andy Pandy wrote:

Thank you for your reply.

> "Anon"  wrote in message
> news:pan.2006.05.01.18.15.04.512829@invalid.invalid...
>> Is any of the following taxable income?
>>
>> 1) cashback from cashback credit cards
> 
> Only if you earned the cashback from business expenditure (eg paying for hotels,
> meals etc on business trips which you claim back on expenses).

Where did you come across this information?

>> 2) cashback from cashback sites such as Rpoints, Quidco, etc.
> 
> Probably same as above.
> 
>> 3) joining incentives (e.g. for opening a bank account)
> 
> No. I guess there are rules the banks have to follow here to stop them disguising
> interest (which is taxable) as an incentive.

Why should this income not be taxable? I saw a list of non-taxable income
on the HMRC site and only very few types of income were not liable to tax.
Is it not the case that the IR turn a blind eye to small fry
like this rather than it not being liable to income tax?

>> 4) referral incentives (e.g. for recommending a product to a friend)
> 
> Probably not, unless you are acting as an agent.  Eg if you have a web site and get
> referral commission from anyone who visits your web site and signs up to a third
> party product from there, that will definitely be taxable.

As a previous poster said: where would the line be drawn? What if you
email 100 friends and persuade them to join? You could easily make a few
thousand quid.

People trade referral incentives on fora without necessarily having a
website with a link.