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:
An umbrella company (or just ‘umbrella’ for short) is how a client might bring you in to work, usually on short term projects, but avoid having to put your on their payroll.
Instead you will be on the payroll of another company (the umbrella company) which will treat you as their employee. They put you on the umbrella’s payroll, use the PAYE system and take off income tax and NI, student loan repayment and pension contributions just as any other employer does.
For years I’ve been talking about the importance for freelancers of calculating the cost of your personal life and then targeting the amount of work you need to get to cover those costs.
This post has been updated to clarify the difference between the sole trader registration threshold and the trading allowance.
Well, it’s nice to write about some good-ish news.
The government has announced that the point at which a sole trader has to register as such for self-assessment (ie filling in a tax form every year) will go up from £1,000 to £3,000 per year “in this parliament”.
That should mean that you’ll soon be able to earn £3,000 ‘on the side’ from sole trader work, without having to register as a sole trader for self assessment.
The change could benefit PAYE freelancers who just do a bit of sole trader work.
Q: The current ‘trading allowance’ for sole traders is also £1,000. Is that changing too?
Any sole trader or company freelancer will know how important it is to get invoicing right. One missing code number, or the wrong format, and you might not get paid.
The introduction should be friendly and personal, wishing people a Merry Christmas and successful and peaceful 2025. The introduction should be maximum 150 words. With each sentence as a separate paragraph.
There should be two further topic-related sections. The first of these sections should be a 150 word summary about recent developments in AI and what it means for the creative industries. Please reference these three articles and credit the authors:
The second section should be advertising two Setting up as a Sole Trader training courses, one on 27th January 2025 and the other on Tuesday 25th February 2025. Include a link to this booking page:
