As with any kind of freelance work, one additional responsibility that comes along is that of keeping yourself tax compliant.
I’ve technically been a freelancer since March 2006 and it has been the sole source of my income since then, so I now need to make sure my taxes are in order in time for the 31st October deadline this year (at least I think I do, anyway).
I recently decided to (finally) get the ball rolling on this and register myself as self-employed, although I hadn’t the first clue how to do it. So to get help figuring this out I emailed Revenue on the 30th of July and asked them for pointers on what I needed to do.
A few days passed and I had heard nothing in return so I decided to take the old-fashioned route and ring them instead; I was passed onto a helpful man who told me what form I needed to fill out (a TR1, apparently) and where I needed to send it, so I printed it off from their site and posted it a day or two later.
At the start of this week I got a letter to tell me I had been registered for income tax and could now take the next step in the process, which was to file my annual accounts/income/something for 2006.
I followed the advice of the letter and logged onto their Revenue Online Service website. I filed in a few details and am now waiting for some code or another to be sent out to me so I can do the dog work online, rather than through the post. How very modern.
So this morning I awoke to find an email from Revenue in my inbox – I thought it was something to do with the ROS site, like the code I needed to register, or a problem that they had encountered… nope. It was an email from a helpful individual informing me of what I needed to do to register for income tax as a self employed person… a response to the mail I sent them nearly a month ago. I do appreciate the fact that they got back to me, but it is 24 days later.
So my advice to you – if you’re looking to contact Revenue about something urgent, use the telephone and save your emails for someone who gives a damn.