Thanks Ladies. I received his reply this morning;

"Certainly subsistence, as opposed to entertaining, is tax deductible. You would need to substantiate the need to be away from home"

I guess that when he said entertainment dinners/lunches etc, I simply interpreted it as food in general.

Ahh yeah, he was probably referring to if you did a dinner date with a client.

Back on topic, I had a skim over my spreadsheet just now (also gathering up everything for the end of the year ) and without actually doing any calculations I can see that hotels/travel and the associated costs are also far and away my biggest expense (accounting for over 50% of my total expenses) followed by my work flat which covers roughly another 25% of them - what was interesting is that even added together these costs come to less than half what I spent on places to work during my most expensive year when I was touring all the time.

Everything else makes up the rest - my advertising costs are next to nothing as my website only costs 20 quid a year for hosting, my directory ads are free and I rarely need to buy AW credits because I don't spend much on the site bar phone number display five days a week and featuring when I'm in London. My phones and internet are the next highest single category after my flat but at an average of about 50 a month it's a big drop off.

As a percentage of earnings I'd say my total expenses would be somewhere between about 20 and 25%, so by the sound of things fairly average. I'm planning on sitting down and working it out in more detail now I've started, if I ever get the time .

Loved reading about your business models ladies