self employed photographer, use accountants????

dandare

Hi i started out as a self employed photographer about 6months back, ive registered with ni and the tax folk, and ive seen an accountant but just to say hello and give them my details.
i reckon ill be earning about £8 -10000 profit. at this level should i need an accountant or should i do it myself, if so is there any useful software out there to help me keep it all in order.
also the majority of my work, 90% is through the same company, i have heard this can cause problems, the tax man reckons that i should be employed by the company and not self employed, i think its more to do with the company paying some more than myself. does anybody know of this potentail problem?
ta

Tallymanjohn

If your turnover is less than £15k then it's easier/cheaper to just keep a spreadsheet of your income/outgoings & fill in the short self-assessment. As long as you keep track of your income/outgoings you won't need an accountant. Anything over this, & if you have a lot of different sources of income or lots of expenditure then accountant can become useful, especially as you'll need to fill in a full SA tax form. I think you may be skating on thin ice to have 90% of your work from one source - as you say, that's getting towards the employment situation & both you & the customer may get into trouble - try & get other customers, even one-offs - to try & balance it out.

Astaroth

An accountant isnt just about filling in forms though and can help you legitimately reduce your tax liabilities and also highlight issues re 90% of your work coming from the same company.

It may be worth simply having an occasional appointment rather than paying them on a monthly basis to do your books etc

dandare

so would if i made occasional appointments with my accountant, would that mean that i'd be keeping order of the monthly monies going in and out, which im sort of doingf at the moment.

Astaroth

The best thing to do would be to get recommendations of accountants and then sit down and have a meeting with one (they will often give a first consultation free).

Doing an occasiional consultation would cost more for the advice as they would have to review your books in full rather than having a running knowledge of them if they had been doing them all the time for you (though obviously less as a total cost). You can try and limit this extra by chatting to them on how the books are best prepared... turning up ever 6 boths with a cardboard box of receipts will obviously take longer than an email of a P&L/ Cashflow/ balance sheet extract

dandare

thanks astaroth, could anyone recommend some software to keep everything in order, or some basic reading that would give me a better understanding of what i should be doing. at the moment im keeping all outgoing receipts but thats about it. i hardly ever send out an invoice, my main client has a record of all the images used and every once a month or so i drop in to pick up a cheque.
so i really need to get my finger out and get it more organised . so any pointers would be useful. im a complete novice at accounting.
i guess my rule of " as long as i have enough money in my pocket for a fish supper and bottle of irn bru , im ok" wont really cut it with the tax man.
ta