Auto accident injuries can deny you not only your current income but also your future income, especially if the injury leaves you with some permanent disability. Unfortunately, calculating the lost income and future injury damages isn't easy for self-employed accident victims. Here are some of the tips you can use to make the process easier:
Show Evidence of Earning Over a Lengthy Period
As a self-employed person, you will need to show evidence of earnings over a longer period than an employed person. An employed person will probably need to use evidence of current salary as well as a letter from the current employer to authenticate the income. As a self-employed person, however, a few months income will not help you much because your earnings probably fluctuate a lot. Therefore, you will need to show proof of income over a long time, possibly several years, to show a consistent level of income.
Get Testimony from Past Clients
You can also use testimonies from past clients to show that you indeed have the capabilities you are claiming and have done the works you are claiming. Letters from these past clients will probably suffice as proof of your past work. The more recent and spread out these past engagements are, the more weight they will hold in court.
Use Ancillary Forms of Proof
Ancillary proofs may come in the form of financial boos, tax returns, expense bills, and even business invoices. This means you are in a better position to prove your lost and potential earnings if you have been managing your business in a formal manner and have managed to keep proper financial records. This also means that you may lose some of your potential damages if you have been lying on your tax returns.
Use Your Calendar of Appointments
Lastly, you can also rely on your calendar of appointments to prove to the court that you are indeed earning from yourself employment activities. This is especially true if you can also prove that these calendars of appointments have in the past been accompanied by actual work or offers of work. Your claim of lost opportunity will have real weight if you can show a full calendar of appointments for the near future.
Proving lost income and earning potential may be difficult for a self-employed person, but it is not impossible. You just need the right lawyer and (usually) expert witnesses and you are good to go.
Share13 December 2017
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