Maximising income - Mystery Shopping? Surveys? (Part Two)

brownbabygirl

When I was a student I used to MS for NOP. It made e some wonderful tax-free income. Might look into it again!

Timmne

brownbabygirl wrote: »

When I was a student I used to MS for NOP. It made e some wonderful tax-free income. Might look into it again!

It's not tax free, necessarily.....

Although I guess you meant because it's a low income?

brownbabygirl

Timmne wrote: »

It's not tax free, necessarily.....

Although I guess you meant because it's a low income?

yep thats what i meant!:p

Woodyrocks

if you only claim expenses and do not accept the 'paid' jobs then it is tax free.

Woodyrocks

by this I mean accepting only expenses only jobs!

jobbingmusician

Timne, you are an absolute star to give so much free accounting advice to us all! Only one thing I would query - Mouche allocated 50p for looking for jobs online, and you considered this a form of salary. It might be that Mouche spent this money in an internet cafe! - but surely we can claim SOME proportion of broadband costs, or the actual cost of dial-up, for the time it takes us to find and register for jobs? What would you consider a reasonable amount? I have been allocating 50p (my BB costs £25 a month, and I do about 20 MS jobs. MS is the main reason for having BB, but at this rate I am only claiming £10 back against BB and electricity/depreciation of equpiment charges).

Timmne

Thanks JM, a star is not something accountants are usually referred to as!

I suppose it's a piece of string type question...

You could probably get away with putting all of it through but I wouldn't advise it - if you were to have an investigation (and they're done randomly so the chances are there) they would find great enjoyment making you pay tax on some of the expenses you've wrongly claimed, in their eyes.

I personally put 1/3 of my broadband costs through - £4.33 per month out of £12.99 and I consider that at least this much (if not 2/3) of my internet usage is mystery shopping. I'd probably advise to do a similar thing (of course I would!) as it's best to err (sp?) on the side of caution and claim a smaller amount to keep mr tax happy.

Apologies if I'm not making sense - I'm spending the night in with some brocolli & stilton soup for my tea so I'm sure you can understand why I seem rather underwhelming with my typing!

As always, I'm here to help!

Edit: Internet cafe costs are reclaimable as are dial-up costs although the latter is probably a bit of a sketchy one when trying to decide how much to claim!

A_little_stressed!!

Do I have to register for tax even if I'm only earning £20 a month? I'm only going to do this as a hobby and experience and earn under £100 a week so don't currently pay tax. Is it woth the hassle to register of do i HAVE to?!

Timmne

Yep - you have to I'm afraid! On the good side, we're here to help you!

It takes 15 minutes max to fill out all the forms and then another 30 in April to do your tax return - not a lot for peace of mind I'm sure you'll agree?

brownbabygirl

Forgive me off topic: what do the stars mean next to usernames? How does one earn one?