I am a sole director and 100% shareholder trading through a limited company. The eligibility period for entrepreneurs’ relief (ER) has been met, i.e. start of first contract to end of last contract, but it's not continual trading - there's a six-month non-trading period in the middle where I didn't trade through the company and was a permanent employee instead. Is it the entire company operational period used for the qualifying ER period, or does a non-trading period re-start the clock? At the end of the day, I've not been trading for long enough if you count only the weeks/months I traded. 
 
Arthur Weller replies: 
If there has been no cessation of the trade in the interval, then the first period of trading can be joined with the second period of trading. If you look at BIM80580 Cessation-break in activities you can see that if the new activity is similar in scale and nature to the old one then there is a good possibility to argue that there has been no cessation of trade in the interval.