Maximising income - Mystery Shopping? Surveys?

StrategyMan2006

LOL Jobbing! Nice calculations

Becles

Dormouse wrote:

I dunno, can't be that bad if Becles does it for a living? (it was Becles, right?)

Yes it was me! It's been my sole income for a few years now, although I also do merchandising, auditing and video shopping rather than just the written mystery shopping.

I do similar to jobbing musician with self employed stuff.

I have an accounts pad with money coming in, and all my expenses listed. I include things like the cost of shopping job purchases, but also the cost of telephone calls, parking fees, paper/print cartridges for printing paperwork, stamps and envelopes etc. - anything that I have to buy to do the job.

Take the expenses from the income and that's your profit.

Then multiply the number of miles you have done by £0.40. Take that off your profit (allowed car expenses by HMRC).

The final figure is your taxable profit. This will be taxed at whatever rate you pay tax on. (22% for most people I think!).

For PAYG employers, you need to fill in a page for each on your tax return. If you have a main job, or have the self employment as your main job, you will have already paid tax on your PAYG earnings. However you can claim a bit of tax relief back on the mileage. The allowed expense is £0.40 but no company pays this.

EG if you did 100 miles and got £0.25 a mile,
£0.40 - £0.25 = £0.15 (differnce between allowed mileage and what was paid)
£0.15 x 100 miles = £15.00
so you can reduce your tax liability by £15.

It sounds complicated, but if you use the online self assessment software, you just put the figures in the boxes and it works it all out for you!

By claiming the little extra bits back on mileage on PAYG companies, it reduces what you pay on the self employment section, so your overall bill will be lower.

That's probably clear as mud, as I'm not to good at explaining stuff like this!

No offence to people who have posted before about not being able to make an income from it.

If you just take odd random assignments from poor paying companies like Gap, you'll not make any money as the fees are so low and they don't pay travel. I tend to only take on work from companies who pay a decent fee and mileage, then pick up odd Gap assignments to do as I'm there anyway.

Not naming names, but it's a competative job and people have been known to slag it off to put other people off from doing the job. They think too many shoppers will take work away from them, so they always bad mouth the job.

As long as you are happy doing it, and are making money from it, keep it up!

Rachie_B

thanks becles and JM dont feel quite so panicked now lol

Dormouse

Thanks Becles, I thought you've explained it really well.

jobbingmusician

I had a hysterical job yesterday where a main component was to observe other customers. Only drawback - there were no other customers! I sat pretending to do a Suduko for an hour and a half (max time allowed) and a couple came in 10 minutes before I left........:p

Rachie_B

jobbingmusician wrote:

I had a hysterical job yesterday where a main component was to observe other customers. Only drawback - there were no other customers! I sat pretending to do a Suduko for an hour and a half (max time allowed) and a couple came in 10 minutes before I left........:p

lmao

nice work if you can get it ! paid to do suduko :rotfl: :T

PeachPickle

:rotfl: What a brilliant mystery shop!

I had an email from RE today saying they don't know how long the "problem" will go on for, but they're working on it. And I can't re-apply with a different email apparently, won't help!

Dormouse

RE is finally showing some jobs for me under "available assignments" - don't need to actually search anymore

Jobbingmusician: that sounds fun, how come I've never seen jobs like that?

Rachie_B

you might want to edit your post bestfoot,not supposed to disclose how much you get paid,ive had to edit a fair few times lol

hope its gone well for you

Rachie_B

:mad: am so peeved with gapbuster

i finally get all the orientation stuff sorted and today get an email with a fair few jobs in my area !

i was at the PC when the email came through, so i immediately log in and its showing no assignments under any of the locations stated in the email even though i had an email 30 seconds earlier telling me about all these jobs ! grrrrrrr :mad: