[arwyn evans]

full time job at the moment, doing a few houses here and there ,
do i have to tell them straight away, im a little confused :

[Neil Williams]

Any job part time/on the side is tax free.....what do you think?

[pjulk]

You have 3 months from when you started to tell them

Paul

[ian m]

Hi Arwyn

I did a business start up course 4 years ago before I got into cleaning windows.
We had a visit from inland revenue tax adviser.
 She told us to tell them as soon as you first offer your services, if you don't its an automatic £100 fine.

Safer to let them know  asap methinks

regards


Ian

[windows_chepstow]

full time job at the moment, doing a few houses here and there ,
do i have to tell them straight away, im a little confused :

I'd tell 'em nowt till you're sure this is the way you want to go.

[Moderator David@stives]

Do you think its fair this guy can window clean tax free , whilst i am paying thousands a year in tax.

No wonder some can afford to undercut.

Do it right from the start , inform the taxman straight away.

Anyway i think you have already told him, they look at this site you know.

Dave

[WavieDavie]

Arwyn,

You've been on these boards long enough to know the general concensus . . . work smart, work professionally.

As has been pointed out, be straight from the start - it's easier. You don't know if you have any neighbours who'd be happy to stick you in, you don't even know if any of your customers work for the tax office     There are enough details in your profile for someone to track you down quite easily

You also need to get Public Liability  insurance organised, if you haven't already.

Have a good read through this site http://tinyurl.com/y3vutm  and set your sights higher than a few houses here and there. Get stuck in and you'll make a lot more than your existing day-job.

[KarlJones]

tell them ASAP.  Also open a business bank account as they can stick some silly charges on you if they discover you have been using a domestic account for business use.

record everything on paper, what you spend get reciepts and keep them very very safe.  What you get paid record it all.  Ask for a free consultation with an accountant

If in doubt phone up the inland revenue, it is your job to do so.  If you wait for them to come for you they will not be very happy and you will be a lot poorer.

[Count Phil]

I'm all registered and am honest about takings etc. But (and I don't know if I should tell you this) but someone I know works for IR and they are cutting thousands of jobs. Loads of local offices have closed and even now, your 'local' number will be someone in a call centre. These guys are given 1 days induction and  know less about tax than you.

I wasn't sure to believe him, but yes, his office is closing and they are losing their jobs. He is on the investigation team. They now only investigate businesses above a certain turnover (not telling what ). They have given up trying to get non payers into the system due to man power crisis and only screw the people in the system for more to hit their targets.

I needed to talk recently to someone and phoned my 'local' office. I kept getting scottish people answering. Five times, five scottish answerers with different names. I'm in bedfordshire. None of them knew the most simple of questions about tax and ummed and arred before saying I needed to speak to a technical adviser who was NEVER available. They kept telling me to visit the crapping website where you cannot do what I wanted to do. (change from sole trader to partnership). I ended up writing and have received no reply.

All I'm saying is, I want to get things done correctly but can't. I do my own tax and can't even speak to anyone. The service is cut in half. And I know if I make a mistake I'm going to be the one bloke who gets investigated and it'll all be my fault.

You lot in scotland will probably get west country students answering.

[JM123]

be honest from the start, its much safer and if you are only doing a few houses here and there you won't lose a lot in tax. 

[*Madmary's Cleaning Services]

Paul is right.

It is 90 days from the time you start (or possibly from your first payment - not sure which)

Your first year should not be a problem. Whatever your tax liability, you should try to put it away in a high intrest bank account (i know, easier said than done!) Then if you keep every receipt and file your tax return on-line as early as possible in April, there should be no nasty surprises in 2008!

[Moderator David@stives]

macmac

I have a very good accountant thanks.

Dave

[neil100]

I have been doing my 2005 -2006 tax year today.

I do it online so I should hopefully have the taxman paid by Tueday night.

I am only doing it this late this year due to me dealing with a Tax investigation from 2003 - 2004. I did not want to sort it out before the Tax Investigation was finnished.

Accountants are not the be all and end all.I have had an accountant for 25yrs when the costs got to £450.00 for his services I decided to do them myself.Last year was hard as it was my first year doing them myself.This year its a lot easier and after this tax investigation I am pretty red hot on knowing what allowences I can put against my tax.

If you have an accountant and he gets things wrong You are still responsible for any mistakes.

Nel.

[Helen]

simple terms, is £20 here £20 there? worth the hassle  of what could be an extremely damaging investigation for you. Agree Dave why should anyone not pay taxes when others go the correct route and do so. This is the sort of thing that keeps this industry as a "Scally" trade. Not where most of us want to be!
P Bowen, there are so many ways to contact the IR and never have we had problems in doing so! If you need help from them then keep trying, most lines are open to 8 in the evening.

[*Madmary's Cleaning Services]

Got letter from tax man this morning!
Reminder to pay by 31 January.
I'm sure a lot of you have had that too, or are about to.

As we are CIS (taxed at source) they owe us money!
Just got off phone to them.
"Don't worry about it" they said. "It's an automatic letter because we have'nt finished calculating it yet"!

But the point is: the call lasted 4 minutes (including musical intro) and he spoke 'queens english' (or very nearly)

[*Madmary's Cleaning Services]

As for accountants:

We handed everything over to him last April - took him till the end of October to file!

New accountant this tear!

[macmac]

i hand everything to my accountant & let him deal with it, i am still aware though that i am liable if it's not correct, but to be honest i wouldn't have a clue how to do the self assesment. i did ring the IR for some advise but to be honest i already knew more than the guy on the phone (& thats not much), even when i started up & went self employed they were more than useless!! ended up getting all the answers from a mate who'd been through it all already.
you do have to be sensible and record everything, it's not worth cutting any corners where tax is concerned. ( there are lots of benefits to being self employed without being fraudulent).

to the poster- don't panic, let them know your situation within 3 months, the tax issue  is not an immediate priority for you just yet, as mentioned though do record everything you do.