My partner and I currently work through our LTD Company. But we don’t earn/generate that much income so I’m wondering if we would be better off switching to regular self-employed?
The main deciding factor I think would be the expenses that can be claimed.
Can anyone tell me if these expenses (that we claim now) can be claimed when working self-employed from home (and occasionally at a co working space):
- Portion of house rent when working from home (Use of residence as office)?
- Co working space (a place where we pay to work from – would this affect the above)?
- Web hosting (for our business website)?
- Computer software (web design stuff and accounting software)?
- Computer hardware (might have to buy a new laptop in the next year or two)?
- Accountancy fees (what we pay the accountant for doing the tax stuff)?
- Foreign exchange losses AKA Realized Currency Exchange Gain/Loss (we get paid in USD and PayPal uses a lower exchange rate so we lose about a thousand GBP a year due to this)?
- Bank/Finance Charges (PayPal fees on each client payment we receive)?
- Subcontractor Costs (sometimes we have to hire people to do some of the work we take on)?
- Home broadband connection (not sure if we claim that or not)?
I think that’s about all of our expenses. We haven’t started a pension yet. But if we did start a SIPP, would that be an expense too?
Also the cost of the accountant could be a factor too, depending on the difference between the cost of them doing the books for a LTD company vs. two people’s self-employed tax returns.
Does anyone have a rough idea of how much an account charges for doing one person’s tax return? We log everything through FreeAgent so I think all the data would be there?
It’s hard to say which is best because our income should go up each year, but it might not!
Also, what’s the process for shutting down a LTD Company? Does it have a cost? Can we leave it inactive and come back to it later when our earnings pick up?
Are there any good spreadsheets around that I can put all the details in and see what they say?
I will ask our accountants but I’d like to get an idea myself first, as I assume it’s in the their best interests to keep me as LTD Company as they make more money from us that way!
Many thanks!
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