New Business Advince

[pchealer]

Hello All

This is my first post so please be kind! :p
I have been doing a part-time (evenings and weekends) computer support company for about the last 2 years now. It has slowly grown from fixing friends and families computers to local neighbours and people in my town.
It's not great but I get on average one bit of work a week sometimes more.

I have a full time job which I obviously pay PAYE tax for should I be doing the same for my private work? im not much of an accountant or book keeper although I do try to keep invoices of people I do work for.

Should I buy some software like taxcalc dot com ? I don;t have a great deal of free time to really organise a great deal should I just pay someone to do my accounts for me? also I am not VAT registered as I understand it I would need to be earning over a threshold to even bother with this as that correct? also if I declare my self as self - employed do I need to register with companies house? if I was to start paying tax with my weekend work would I have to tell my day time employer as im not sure they would like me doing private work. I have done an HND in Business Information Technology but was more into the IT :D

Any honest advice would be much appreciated I hope I have posted in the right section!

[MyAccountantOnline]

These are all the sort of questions that an accountant can help you with and it would be good to see an accountant to sort things out for you asap. That way you know everything is done properly and your tax affairs are in order.

If you havent yet declared your self-employed earnings you are going to be paying a penalty and may have some interest/penalties on unpaid tax which needs to be dealt with as a matter of priority.

I really wouldnt advise you to try dealing with it yourself when you can pay a small amount in fees and get on with what you do best - it would be a bit like me trying to fix a computer...much better left to someone who knows what they are doing!

[profitxchange]

pop into your local enterprise agency or Business Link they should be able to guide you through your needs and the options.

[stefan_Acca]

You wouldn't need to register for VAT unless you earned above 67,000 however you can register volenteraly, but dependant on whether it would benefit your customers, whether they can pas the VAT on which it doesnt sound like.

Secondly, you have 3 months to register your self employment to the revenue (companies house is for Ltd co.) unless you want to start up a Ltd co. which is very complex.

As for telling your employer i personally think that you don't have to tell them as its irrelevant to them.

I would advise you on consulting an accountant to sort it all out. :D

[pchealer]

Ok thanks for your help I shall try what you have both said im sure I shall be reading this forum alot more very interesting.

[RJH Enterprises]

To help keep your accounts in order you could try one of the free account software packages.

I use GNUCash and find that it suits me very well.

www.gnucash.org (http://www.gnucash.org)

Cheers
Rob

[accountancyextra]

As for telling your employer i personally think that you don't have to tell them as its irrelevant to them.


Sorry Stefan, but I don't neccessarily agree with you on this bit. The OP doesn't state what he does as his "day job". It could be that his private work is in direct conflict with what his employer provides. Even if that's not the case, a number of employment contracts do include clauses where employees have to declare any out of work paid activities. Breaking these clauses could land Slinkydonkey in hot water with his employer and potentially could lose him his job.

I think it's worth checking your contract of employment, Slinkydonkey, just to be on the safe side!