Hi All!
I wanted to talk to you about being self-employed, and how and why many people become self employed even if it’s not blogging. There are so many benefits to be being self employed if you have children you can work round them a lot easier, you can spend more time at home with the family and make the hours up a different day so you don’t have to miss that school performance. Your annual leave would be easier to plan for when suited you not anyone else you might work for, so you could book the half terms off, if you wanted a last minute day off this would also be easier. There are so many jobs now that you can earn extra money from like surveys, online media, online writers, posting ads online, a lot of websites where you can easily earn money from home! you just need to sign up to the websites fill out questionnaires, you can apply for full time admin work from home. I have looked into this a lot recently so here are my tips and what research I have learnt.
A lot of people won’t have the money to start up a business straight away you might need to take out a small business loan, save for a while before taking the jump, or maybe doing the business on the cheaper side, depending on what the business is. If you do go down the loan route then make sure you get a good deal, and work out how much you need to lend and how long will the loan take to repay back. When you do decide to go self-employed you need to register your self as self employed, you need to make yourself a limited company which means your the owner and an employee of the business, you will set up a PAYE ( pay as you earn ) system to pay yourself a wage.What comes under earnings i.e if you’re a blogger it would be sponsored post, affiliate earnings, advertising, sponsored tweets etc, even if you’re given an item of clothing and decide to sell the item a few month later you need to declare how much you sold the item for. I would ask someone to help with the taxes if you don’t know what you’re doing as this needs to be right! the tax man will want all the details and the paper work, there are plenty of accounts you could hire to help you with this side of a business.
Even though you are a self employed if you earn over the £10,600 threshold you will need to start paying tax, if you have another job you will have to combine both earnings together. if you’re earning more then the allowance you will have to pay 20% back on whatever you’re earning on top of the standard rate. You will have to also consider how much National Insurance you will need to pay, this depends on how much you earn if you’re only earning spare money and its a small amount less than £5,965 a year, you may be able to get a small earnings exception which means you don’t pay any, if you’re over that threshold you have to arrange your National insurance payments yourself either through direct debit or by paying the amount in payment requested that HMRC will send you.
If you have already registered yourself as self-employed you’ll already be registered with self assessment and national insurance contributions. you should receive two letters in the post, the first letter is your unique tax payer reference and it will confirm that everything is set up. The second letter will be and activation code that will allow you to go online, you need to use that within 28 days or you will need to reapply again. To declare how much money you make you need to fill out a self assessment tax return by the end of every tax tear which is April, you can do this online or by using a form.You need to keep hold of all your business receipts, bank statements, so you can work out how much you have earnt minus the expenses. To work out what classes as business expenses this can be anything from cameras, laptops, tools, transport, this could be anything depending on what your business is. I have included all the research I have done on self employment if you want to know or learn anything the best website to get extra information from is the HMRC, they will be able to answer all your queries now matter how silly you think they maybe.
*Would you be self employed? Do yo have any tips? Is it worth taking the jump?
Lots Of Love,
