egafd.com

pay your taxes, keep contributing to the foreign aid bill.

I prefer 'keep paying taxes, the banks need it'.

As someone who has been self-employed for over 25 years, my top tips would be:

1. Use an accountant initially. If they are any good whatsoever they will save you more than you are charged for the service.

2. Use a cheap accounting package. I used a package called Quicken to keep track of my income/spending and it should save accountancy fees whilst enabling you to run a number of reports during the year to see how you are getting on.

3. Set up a separate business account and make sure that all your business expenditure comes out of that one account and that all payments go into that account.

4. Get some advice on what National Insurance class is best for you to pay. Many self employed people work all the life, lose their business and find that they struggle to get benefits/full pension etc. The self employed are the lowest of the low as far as the Benefit system is concerned so you need to understand the pros and cons of self employed re. benefits.

5. The HMRC are always on the lookout for self employed people to hammer. One of the favourite ploys is to argue that a self employed person working for a single company is actually an employee and then they come after you for income tax and full National Insurance payments as if you are self-employed. Much better to have a number of different companies that you work with.

Good Luck!

"come after you for income tax and full National Insurance payments as if you are self-employed."

This should read as if you are an employee.

David Johnson wrote


....

5. The HMRC are always on the lookout for self employed people to hammer. One of the favourite ploys is to argue that a self employed person working for a single company is actually an employee and then they come after you for income tax and full National Insurance payments as if you are self-employed. Much better to have a number of different companies that you work with.


Yes only working for one company or having the majority of your work from one company and claiming to be self-employed is asking for trouble. HMRC will see this as employed by this company even if part-time or casual labour.
Any further work from a few other clients would be treated a second job and classed as self employed.


I was self-employed for a while. My turnover was below the VAT threshold which saves a lot of work. I did my own accounts and included as expenses the business proportion of my car costs, use of one room in house as an office, percentage of telephone bill etc. If anything I didn't allow enough for expenses but doubt if the fees I would have paid to an accountant would have been less than the tax they saved. Also if HMRC thought my expenses were low it would not be in their interest to investigate.

Be sure to keep all receipts however small the amount for ( I think ) a minimum of seven in an organised way should you be asked to produce them.

Thanks for all the tips and help from all.
I will read these and have a think how I will go about this.