Supplementary IT Evening/Weekend Work

Peter1988

Hi,

I currently have a full time job as an IT Consultant Monday to Friday on a fixed salary, with bonuses, car allowance etc.

I was hoping to do some private work in my spare time (Evenings and weekend) to supplement my income but really dont know the ins and outs of this and whether or not its actually worth it.

Is anyone with experience or knowledge of this able to assist at all?

It's not that I'm trying to move away from my fixed income from the company I work for, rather supplement my earnings to pay for family holidays for example. I wouldnt throw myself into it with the idea of eventually becoming self employed (at this time).

I guess my main questions are -

1. Is there a tax penalty for effectively having '2 jobs'? I currently pay the higher rate tax as it stands.
2. Will I need to register as a company and is this expensive/difficult?

Feedback much appreciated.

IsabelleJ

I can only answer one of those questions which is that, no, there is n tax penalty for having two jobs, you just have to pay your normal rate of income tax.

As for work to do in your spare time, well, that sort of depends on what you're specialised in. You have the very basic jobs, such as designing websites and maybe doing some tech support on the side. But for the more high end stuff, you'd need to go freelance and try and find something that would complement your day job without taking too much time. That's not something I have any experience with, so I will be interested to see what ideas people come up with.

Good luck

Isabelle

scaredofdebt

No, you don't need to register a company etc, you can do this on a sole trader basis.

If you want to register a company then you can do this at the companies house website, I think there's a small fee to do so, £10-£20 or so but it isn't necessary. However, if you start earning a decent amount it may be better to do this from a tax point of view.

I have worked in the IT industry as an employee and now do ad-hoc contract work for a couple of small companies, your main problem will be getting any work to start with but over time if you persevere you should be OK.

I am not a lawyer or accountant so treat my advice as that of a lay person!

droopsnoot

You should also check your employment contract, and see if there's anything in there to restrict your activities.


I would wonder (though I am generally quite negative about these things, so take this with a pinch of salt) whether anything you can do strictly out of hours is going to be worth doing. Anyone paying a decent amount of money for you to do such work will probably want to be able to contact you when they need to, not just outside your normal working hours - which might be OK and might not. You might well end up fighting for the kind of cheap jobs that any college kid will do for next to nothing - in return for posting some help on a programming forum, for example, someone asked me if I'd write them a complete shopping cart system, and they would "give me $10".


Obviously through your work you might already have some ideas and contacts, just make sure you're not going to cause trouble with your main job.

motorguy

Peter1988 wrote: »

Hi,

I currently have a full time job as an IT Consultant Monday to Friday on a fixed salary, with bonuses, car allowance etc.

I was hoping to do some private work in my spare time (Evenings and weekend) to supplement my income but really dont know the ins and outs of this and whether or not its actually worth it.

Is anyone with experience or knowledge of this able to assist at all?

It's not that I'm trying to move away from my fixed income from the company I work for, rather supplement my earnings to pay for family holidays for example. I wouldnt throw myself into it with the idea of eventually becoming self employed (at this time).

I guess my main questions are -

1. Is there a tax penalty for effectively having '2 jobs'? I currently pay the higher rate tax as it stands.
2. Will I need to register as a company and is this expensive/difficult?

Feedback much appreciated.

And what does your IT Consultant role currently entail?

Are those skills tranferrable into something you can do in the evenings? For example, if you're providing IT consultancy advice to banks on IT security, then that might not be viable to do in the evenings when those businesses are closed?

As has also been said, i would look carefully at your current contract - your current company might not be very impressed if you're moonlighting

motorguy

Peter1988 wrote: »

1. Is there a tax penalty for effectively having '2 jobs'? I currently pay the higher rate tax as it stands.
2. Will I need to register as a company and is this expensive/difficult?

No tax penalty per se, but you'll be losing 40% of any money you make to tax alone.

You'll need to get an accountant, so expect to pay £600 to £1,000 a year for that

HappyMJ

I would set up a company for the tax savings. Corporation tax is 20% and personal income tax is 40%. You will be saving despite having more red tape I always saved money through a Ltd. company. Some companies I dealt with will not deal with sole traders as they could be considered as employees by the HMRC and the employer being your client would be responsible for tax and NI. You can take some work through an umbrella company but they have charges you need to pay.