I get a lot of questions from people on my Finance of Freelancers courses about what happens to tax if you have a mix of PAYE income and sole trader income.
PAYE income and sole trader profits are both taxed using the income tax system, which is pretty straight forward.
But PAYE income is usually taxed by the time you get it, and sole trader income never is.
READ MORE >Posted on 05 April 2023
If you’re a freelancer it’s good to think like a business, and part of that is keeping an eye on how tax works. You can sometimes save a bit of money just by tweaking your behaviour across different tax years.
Yesterday (17 November 2022) Chancellor Jeremy Hunt unveiled the latest plans to deal with the UK’s financial woes.
READ MORE >Posted on 18 November 2022
What to do when you feel your social network no longer cuts the mustard?
This is the question loads of people have asked themselves since Elon Musk took over Twitter.
For many it seems the answer is Mastodon.
I started my training business before social media existed, and usually claim that I only use them for work, not personal life.
READ MORE >Posted on 07 November 2022
I’m often asked about the idea that sole traders have to pay tax ‘in advance’.
That’s not quite true, but the ‘payment on account’ system means you might have to pay tax in advance of knowing precisely what the final bill for the year will be.
READ MORE >Posted on 22 July 2022
Every year at this time I outline some tweaks and changes to the tax system, so that you can plan your finances better.
This year it’s more complicated, partly because of the government’s reaction to the pandemic and partly because of some decisions made by Chancellor Rishi Sunak to change the balance of who gets taxed and how.
READ MORE >Posted on 01 April 2022
NB: This blog mainly uses 2021-22 figures for Plan 2 loans. Figures change every tax year, and might be different for Scottish residents, but the principle is the same.
For useful links, scroll down to the Find Out More box.
Student loan repayments are a bit of a pain when you’re a PAYE freelancer.
READ MORE >Posted on 03 March 2022
I was struck recently that only nine people are in the pilot scheme for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-assessment (known, horribly, as MTD-ITSA).
This is the massive HMRC project requiring sole traders (people registered as ‘self-employed’) and landlords to report turnover and business costs quarterly from April 2024, using special ‘cloud accounting’ software.
READ MORE >Posted on 01 March 2022
Last week I tweeted angrily, not something I do often:
Unbelievable: @HMRCgovuk suddenly decides Arts Council Emergency Response grants for freelancers during lockdown are now to be treated as taxable. With 3 days till tax deadline. This was the ONLY income for some people during lockdown. Inhuman.https://t.co/b9kCXR0myq
— David O Thomas (@davidowenthomas) January 27, 2022
The tax office appears to have decided right at the last moment that certain Covid hardship grants should, after all, be taxable. Whereas they’d said earlier that they were not.
READ MORE >Posted on 31 January 2022
For the second year running HMRC have moved the deadline for filing your income tax self-assessment back to Feb instead of the usual 31st January.
They’ve relented to pressure from accountancy and other bodies because so many people are off with covid and might not be able to get everything done in time.
READ MORE >Posted on 07 January 2022
If you use an iPhone you may be aware of Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 15.
Apparently it’s full of “amazing” new features. Apple are going big on new memojis, and clever things that FaceTime can now do.
As a trainer in freelance business skills the new feature which caught my eye is called ‘Focus’.
READ MORE >Posted on 29 September 2021
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