Fun With Taxes, Part the 1st
Today I started getting my taxes sorted. If you know me at all, you'll be able to guess that this was an adventure all itself.
Being "self-employed" as I am (actually an "independant contractor" according to the contract, but the meaning is the same), I have to be responsible for sorting out all my National Insurance contributions and the like. Well, I'd been avoiding getting this sorted because I knew it wouldn't be easy for me, but yesterday I saw someone on the work forum reminding everyone to make sure their self-assessment was in before the end of the month. Cue panicking from me, and a trip to the taxes website to see what I needed to do.
Cue even more panicking from me when I read the site and couldn't make heads nor tails of it. I ask Nick, but he doesn't have any idea either. The only things I see that I can understand is a part that says that, if you don't register yourself with them as self-employed within three months of starting work, you get a fine.
So this morning I rang the tax people, hoping that they would be able to help me out with some of the stuff I needed to do (such as telling me what I needed to do, for starters). Thankfully, the woman I spoke to was very helpful, and walked me through things with a minimum of fuss:
- First off, it turns out I don't need to do a self-assessment until I've been working for about a year. Since I've only been working (properly) for about two months, I don't have to worry about that till around October (I think). So that's not a problem.
- She also took my details for getting registered as self-employed, and explained how the whole NI contributions thing works. You pay £2.30 a week in NI, and that covers you for pensions, Incapacity Benefit and the like, and you can pick how to pay. However, if you're earning under a certain amount a year (about £4800) you don't have to pay the contributions - but you also don't get your pension and benefits covered. It's something of a trade-off, and one I have to think on before deciding.
- I'm apparently getting a form to fill in through the post in a few days, which I know I'll need Nick to help with (because the chances are it'll be full of numbers), and then I'll see where I can go from there. I still need to investigate things like rebates and claiming costs back though...
Being "self-employed" as I am (actually an "independant contractor" according to the contract, but the meaning is the same), I have to be responsible for sorting out all my National Insurance contributions and the like. Well, I'd been avoiding getting this sorted because I knew it wouldn't be easy for me, but yesterday I saw someone on the work forum reminding everyone to make sure their self-assessment was in before the end of the month. Cue panicking from me, and a trip to the taxes website to see what I needed to do.
Cue even more panicking from me when I read the site and couldn't make heads nor tails of it. I ask Nick, but he doesn't have any idea either. The only things I see that I can understand is a part that says that, if you don't register yourself with them as self-employed within three months of starting work, you get a fine.
So this morning I rang the tax people, hoping that they would be able to help me out with some of the stuff I needed to do (such as telling me what I needed to do, for starters). Thankfully, the woman I spoke to was very helpful, and walked me through things with a minimum of fuss:
- First off, it turns out I don't need to do a self-assessment until I've been working for about a year. Since I've only been working (properly) for about two months, I don't have to worry about that till around October (I think). So that's not a problem.
- She also took my details for getting registered as self-employed, and explained how the whole NI contributions thing works. You pay £2.30 a week in NI, and that covers you for pensions, Incapacity Benefit and the like, and you can pick how to pay. However, if you're earning under a certain amount a year (about £4800) you don't have to pay the contributions - but you also don't get your pension and benefits covered. It's something of a trade-off, and one I have to think on before deciding.
- I'm apparently getting a form to fill in through the post in a few days, which I know I'll need Nick to help with (because the chances are it'll be full of numbers), and then I'll see where I can go from there. I still need to investigate things like rebates and claiming costs back though...