Tax advice for potential self employed newbie

ANGELFLOWER

Hi,

I am looking for some advice on tax, and hoping that I have posted this is the right place.

I am currently on maternity leave and looking at perhaps giving up full time work. I have been looking at posts on the site about earning money doing surveys, mystery shopping, selling Avon, selling on ebay and Amazon. I don't necessarilly expect to earn a fortune, but just enough.

I understand that I would need to be registered as self employed to comply with tax regs but am a bit confused. Do I need to register as self employed for each of the above i.e. doing surveys, selling on Amazon, selling on ebay etc.? The reason I ask is that the self employment form asks for a business name and nature of business. Do I need a business name for doing surveys and being a mystery shopper? I can understand that I would perhaps have one for ebay and Amazon.

Also where do cashback sites fall into this, is this considered as earnings, or a discount on purchases that does not need to be declared?

Any advice will be gratefully received.

Many thanks.

Iklemiss

I'd love to know the answer to this too im in the same position as you and am looking at hopefully doing some mystery shopping and some home telesales work.

Would also be nice to know what the tax rates would be if i was also working part time.

Scaredy_Cat_3

You can just use your own name as the business name and use that to include stuff like Avon, Amazon and Mystery Shopping, if you see what I mean. That way, you just need to keep one set of accounts of all your income and expenditure.

For nature of business you can just put Avon agent / mystery shopper (or something like that), you don't have to pin yourself down to just one.

You do need to register as self employed for mystery shopping - not sure about surveys. However, you are allowed to earn something like 6.5k per year before you have to start paying tax.

Edited to add: If the stuff you're selling on ebay is just old stuff that you want to get rid of, I don't think you need to register as self employed for that - as far as I'm aware that only applies if you buy stuff to sell on, not if you are getting rid of your old used items.

ANGELFLOWER

Thanks, that is helpful.

Concerning the nature of business, do I need to keep this up to date? i.e. if I do something new that I have not mentioned do I need to contact them to tell them or is it not that important e.g. if I suddenly start selling on Amazon. I obviously would have all the records on the accounts.

fengirl_2

All HMRC are interested in is that you are registered self employed. they dont mind how many businesses you have as long as you enter the accounts details for each one on the self assessment pages of the SA. There is a space on the form to put start and end dates for each business if necessary.
HMRC would however want to see separate accounts for each type of business - so selling stuff on Ebay and Amazon and being an Avon lady would count as oine type of business because you would have purchases, stock on hand, etc, and mystery shopping and surveys would be a different trade as it is providing a service.

Scaredy_Cat_3

fengirl wrote: »

All HMRC are interested in is that you are registered self employed. they dont mind how many businesses you have as long as you enter the accounts details for each one on the self assessment pages of the SA. There is a space on the form to put start and end dates for each business if necessary.
HMRC would however want to see separate accounts for each type of business - so selling stuff on Ebay and Amazon and being an Avon lady would count as oine type of business because you would have purchases, stock on hand, etc, and mystery shopping and surveys would be a different trade as it is providing a service.

I assume for that you mean just if you are asked to show them the accounts? You've got me worried now - I listed 3 business activities when I registered as self employed and I keep all my accounts mixed in together. I did my tax return last year and they didn't question it.

I'd have problems splitting it actually as I list a proportion of my broadband and telephone for business use and I'm not sure I'd be able to split that between the different activities.

Actually, none of my business activities involve buying stock, so maybe that's why it's ok for me to do it this way.

ANGELFLOWER

Thanks, but now I am confused again. To clarify should I register as self employed once with the business name as my own, listing all the types of business possbile on the one form e.g. Amazon Mystery Shopping etc. and then declare earnings as one on a tax return, but keep seperate accounts? (I've been looking at a short tax return form as my earnings won't be that high). Or should I send in seperate self employment registrations for each 'business' e.g. 'my name Amazon', 'my name Ebay' etc. and then fill in a tax return for each 'business'. Although it would be more work wouldn't the latter be simpler to understand if I was to underatke a new venture e.g. Avon, which would then be a new business 'my name Avon'. As said it doesn't matter how many businesses you have. I've been looking at the forms online and trying to understand what is required.

Edit: Thinking about this again, maybe I only need to register two businesses i.e. 'my name trading' for any buying selling such as Amazon and ebay, and 'my name services' such as mystery shopping and surveys.