Self assessment

MissL89

Hi!

I have recently accepted a job working for a company on a self employed basis.

The job involves using my car to travel around the county. I am paid per job for the work I do, not per hour.

I believe I can claim back the milage at 45p a mile however I am a little unsure of how this works at this point.

The example given on the .gov website is if you earn £40k and your expenses are 10k, the remaining 30k is subject to tax.
However if I am looking at a much smaller income, say for example I earn 12k. And let's say my milage and other expenses for the year come to 3k.

With the tax allowance being £11,850, I'm assuming you don't just get back 3k worth of expenses, so would I effectively only be able to claim back the tax for the £150 over my allowance.

Sorry if that is confusing , I'm just trying to work out how worth it this job is going to be as the petrol is going to eat into my earnings massively.

Thanks:j

BoGoF

Your understanding is correct....almost. You wont be claiming any tax back as based on your figures you wont be paying any.

MissL89

Thank you. So any petrol/ car use for the self employed work will solely come out of my earnings and it could (using the example above) take £12,000 earnings down to £9,000 earnings ?

BoGoF

Yes, that sums it up.

soulsaver

Did you mean county or country?

Has no one close to you asked: A quarter of your income is spent chasing around the count(r)y in your time (and car?) & at your cost?

Your expectations are £12k pa less £3K expenses?

I hope you don't mind a stranger saying you're being stiffed - you could probably work shorter hours and take more money home flipping burgers.

MissL89

Yeah , it's looking worse and worse :rotfl:

I thought there would be a lot more work than there seems to be and all of the work I've been offered is a distance away so assuming I can effectively claim nothing back it doesn't seem worth it.

It's in an industry I wanted to get into, so I thought I'd give it a go. I now see why they don't pay people themselves and want you to register as self employed as it would easily work out below minimum wage....

Back to the drawing board I think ....