Guidance for BSL interpreters supporting people on finance courses

You can see some selected slides from this session here:

Selected ‘Finance for Freelancers’ slides >

During sessions I sometimes vary the order of the slides as I go along according to needs, but there shouldn’t be anything too different from these.

The terminology I will be explaining includes:

• freelance – a very broad term that means someone working in non-permanent work over time. It can include people who are paid  PAYE (pay as you earn; ‘employed’ to the tax office), people who are registered as a sole trader (which means ‘self-employed’ to the tax office), and people who work through their own limited company
  
  
• sole trader – a type of one-person business; the person is the business
  
  
• limited company – a type of business where the company is the business but the person is not
  
  
• turnover – business income; what you invoice for
  
  
• business-related, tax-deductible expenses – costs that businesses have (including sole trader businesses) that can be recorded to reduce your tax bill
  
  
• profit – turnover minus  business-related expenses; this is what businesses in the UK are normally taxed on.
  
  
• RTI – Real Time Information – a system where employers tell the tax office about salaries paid to employees on the day or before the day the employee is paid.
  
  
• help sheets – my support on specific topics accessible via my site
  
  
• templates – ditto – spreadsheets and invoice templates which people can download and use
  
  
• cloud-accounting software – HMRC authorised software to keep business records (e.g. QuickBooks, FreeAgent, etc.

We often have breakout room sessions, so I will make sure you and anyone you are supporting are in a room together.

We also use mentimeter.com to run polling and fun quizzes on things like tax. I will be explaining how this works to everyone on the day. It’s pretty straightforward.

I am always very comfortable being interrupted during the session if there’s anything that needs clarifying. That will certainly happen a number of times as the terminology and concepts will be new to all.