The Taxman

Since I started working in-house at the beginning of 2017, I haven’t had to deal with quotes, invoices, deductibles, or tax returns. While on the one hand that was a relief since dealing with taxes was time-consuming and required energy and patience I could have invested in working and actually earning money, on the other hand (in a somewhat masochistic way) I miss dealing with that side of business.

Filing your tax return gives you the chance to get an overview of the work you did in the previous year, put everything into perspective, and it seems like an accomplishment, it gives you the chance for freelance “New Year’s” resolutions. Personally, I got my kicks from dealing with my Self Assessment Tax Return because I was incredibly proud of my filing system and how neat my spreadsheets looked, so I saw the end of the tax year as a chance to show off my color-coded folders and efficient receipt-storing skills.

In the UK, where I was registered as self-employed, the tax year ends on the 5th April, and people can start submitting their tax return after this date. You actually have time to submit it online until the end of the calendar year however, in my opinion, it is easier to “close a chapter” before starting a new one, so I preferred to deal with my tax returns as soon as I could.

In order to minimise time and effort spent dealing with your tax return, preparation is key, regardless of whether or not you have an accountant filing your return for you. Freelancers who are at the start of their careers might feel intimidated by the whole process, but the UK system is fairly straight-forward and HMRC provide a great deal of free online resources, including an app to help you out.

Let’s face it: freelancers have to juggle a gazillion things at a time, and invoices et al only add to our workload, so we need all the help we can get. There are quite a few apps out there designed for self-employed people and their accounting needs. For instance, Money Penny helps keep track of how much you have worked, of the expenses you need to claim, or of invoices. Invoice 2 Go is another app that allows you to create and customise invoices and send them. KashFlow and Free Agent are two accounting apps that are tailored for the UK market and have built-in features (such as VAT calculators) that are adapted to the UK system. Other reputable apps include Quickbooks Online, Wave (cloud-based), Fresh Books, or Xero.

While it might be a bit too late to start using a brand new system at the end of the tax year, we still have a whole month ahead of us before the start of the new year, so this would be a great time to explore some of these apps by either trying the free versions or starting a 30-day trial, to figure out which type of software or app could suit your business needs and help make taxes easy-peasy (and who knows, maybe even fun).