Avon and full time employed! Help

Moomster

Hi All

I was trying to find something on google, but nothing really fully answers my questions. I noticed on this site there have been previous threads about Avon and self-employed and i understand all that. But I have just signed up to be an Avon rep as well as being in full time work, my work is just a little more than NMW.

What do i do tax wise? Do i declare myself as self employed too? Do i open up a seperate bank account and keep all Avon money away from my day to day income - Argg help!

I went onto HM Revenue page and come off again later with a killer head ache. The information about being employed and self employed did not make sense, with its different levels of NI and stuff.
My partner is complaining that i will get taxed to hell and back on the two earnings. The round that i am picking up consists of 77 houses as well my own personal customers via friends and family.

When my Avon manager came to see me i couldnt believe how unhelpful she was with my questions about money. It all just seemed so gray.

If anyone has got any advise or ideas or even a way of understanding our strange tax systems, then i would be very grateful.

Thank you

antrobus

The first thing you need to do is to register as self-employed with HMRC (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/selfemployed/register-selfemp.htm)

You don't need to open a seperate bank account. The advantage of doing so is that it will indeed keep all the Avon money away from your day to day money, the disadvantage is that the bank will charge you for it. Whether you need a separate account in any practical sense will depend on what kind and volume of transactions you are talking about and how good you are at keeping records.

You'll certainly pay 20% tax on the profits you make from your Avon business. You probably won't have to pay any flat rate Class 2 NI contributions because you are already paying NI on your full time job. You might have to pay some Class 4 NI contributions based on 8% of your profits, but that would be only if your profits were more than £5k or so.

You only pay tax on the profits you make, which will be your Avon income less expenses, which might include travelling costs and business use of your home.

Moomster

Thank you.

nlj1520

If you use your normal family bank account for your Avon stuff and there is ever a query from HMRC you will have to supply those bank statements to them. If it's a seperate bank account then you will only have to supply the Avon account statements.
Personally it wouldn't matter to me...I use one bank account for all my stuff, but it bother some people to give HMRC more info than they ask for.

John_Pierpoint

If you intermix your private account with your business account your tax inspector can crawl about all over your transactions, can you remember and justify why you spent this that and the other.
I know of someone who bought his wife's Xmas present using his business credit card (that was all he had in his pocket at the time)
Small business man had sleepless nights, tax inspector had a field day demanding copies of his other accounts to "reconcile".