can your boyfriend do the legwork to declare self employed? he will need proof of 6 months of minimum required income.
Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated than that for self-employment.
You can only use a full tax year for self-employment income, which in most cases is April 6th to April 5th.
So, right now, applying before April 2017, only the April 2015 to April 2016 tax year income can be used.
If applying after April 2017, the April 2016 to April 2017 tax year can be used, but only if taxes have been filed for the tax year.
If he is not currently registered as self-employed, he may not be able to use his income from 2015/2016 or 2016/2017 (it would depend on the paperwork requirements)... so it might even be the case that they wouldn't qualify for the visa until April 2018, in order to have a full registered tax year of income (April 2017 to April 2018).
They really need to investigate his current situation fully and work out what paperwork/requirements they can meet.
