This is an article I posted on LinkedIn in light of all the redundancy announcements at the moment.
Feel free to add your own thoughts or advice at the bottom.
Posted on 10 July 2026
For higher earning sole traders who’ve been going for a few years, this has been an interesting month.
The first ‘quarterly reporting deadline’ for the new Making Tax Digital process was on 7th August.
By that date affected sole traders had to press a button on their software to report total of turnover (business income) and total of business running costs between 6 April and 5th July 2026.
So how did it go?
READ MORE >Posted on 08 September 2026
It’s been a while since I posted anything Brexit-related. Partly because it’s all be too depressing.
However we need to enjoy glimmers of light where we can.
This glimmer comes from the digitisation of an annoying bureaucratic process.
READ MORE >Posted on 21 July 2026
HMRC have snuck out a consultation a few weeks ago just as you head off on your hols.
I’ve only just spotted it and big thanks to the finance journalist Iona Bain for posting about it on LinkedIn.
It’s almost as if HMRC doesn’t want us to read what’s being proposed.
It’s called ‘timely payments of income tax self assessment’, but what it’s really about is paying income tax sooner than at present.
READ MORE >Posted on 17 July 2026
For most people I meet on my finance for freelancers courses tax is fundamentally very simple. You live in the UK and you pay tax in the UK.
There is a small group who live in the UK and work in other countries as well. For most that’s simple too.
If you’re resident in the UK you pay tax on income wherever you earned it. (Just convert it back to sterling in your records!)
Then there are the Americans.
READ MORE >Posted on 07 July 2026
If you’ve been on one of my recent courses, you’ll know you have a lot of downloadable resources available to you forever.
I probably gave you a link to the Course Materials page, which now no longer exists!
But don’t panic. Everything has been moved to a new improved Resource Hub.
READ MORE >Posted on 03 July 2026
A quick update after announcements from the Treasury.
I suppose this is good news, as a result of bad news!
Update June 2026: Because of the US war in Iran and the rise in fuel costs, the government has raised the mileage rate for using your car for a business journey.
It is £0.55p per mile (up from £0.45p) for the tax year 2026-27, backdated to 6 April 2026.
Posted on 25 June 2026
“We are on a mission to make life easier for small firms by getting money moving faster through the economy by tackling late payments.”
Emma Jones CBE, Small Business Commissioner
It’s good to see the government keeping up the pace on its late payment plans this week.
READ MORE >Posted on 31 March 2026
Guest post by SA Mathieson
You can edit with a typewriter or a calculator, but not both, legendary Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter apparently used to tell his underlings.*
This may be true if you work for a large organisation, but if you are a creative freelancer it helps if you can use the modern equivalent of both.
While most people can use a word processor, spreadsheets remain a mystery to many. That’s one reason why spreadsheets are one of the two main topics of my new course on demystifying technology for freelancers, along with artificial intelligence.
READ MORE >Posted on 20 March 2026
Over the years I’ve learnt that hot takes on Budget day are a waste of time. The really interesting stuff for freelancers tends to be tucked away in the supporting documents.
The Chancellor only really talks about half the stuff that’s relevant when she speaks in the Commons.
I’ve just spent a day looking through the other half, and here’s a summary of some of the bits that might be useful for freelancers:
READ MORE >Posted on 01 December 2025
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