How to sort out tax with babysitting ?

[justmemeandi]

Hi all, just wondered how you go about sorting tax out with babysitting ? I'm an employed nanny but will be building up a network of babysitting in the new year so want to do it all legally!

All money earned should be declared so if you are going to do regular and earn off bs then register as se and do tax return at the end of the year

You can be se and employed at the same time

You don't have to do it as a tax return. It can be easier than this.

Assuming you are on PAYE from your main employment - your tax office has given your employers' payroll provider a "tax code" confirming your tax-free allowance.

Say you plan to babysit once a week 50 weeks a year and earn £50 on each occasion - that would be £2,500 extra earnings. So you write to your tax office saying "I expect to receive £2,500 in other emoluments between 6th Apr 2015 and 5th Apr 2016 - please adjust my tax code accordingly".

The tax office will send a revised tax code to your PAYE payroll people and a little more tax will be taken off those earnings to include the tax due on babysitting income.

Keep written records of your actual earnings. Each year after 6th April write to the tax office again giving the correct (rather than estimated) figure for the year now closed, and a new estimated figure for the year ahead.

This only works if your tax affairs are generally simple but it's great to avoid doing a tax return if you can.

Look up Cash Basis accounting, it is a nice simple way of keeping records.

A tax return is not that complicated. You need to keep in mind that the tax year runs 6th April to 5th April, so starting a business now will mean that your do accounts for this tax year up till April, then you would pay the taxes due by end of Jan the following year (so Jan 2017).

Tax return is easy to do and as no guarantee what op will earn she can't ring up tax office and say she will def be earning £2500 extra - plus if her nanny family is paying her nett (more fool them) then they will end up paying extra tax not op

My family pay me gross not net. So is it better to do a tax return? do I do this in April? And would I simply keep the money between now and then but note down how much I've earnt? and fill out the form in April.

yes i would do a tax return

register as se for additonal/temp/ad hoc nannywork

write down all that you earn, plus you can also claim a % back for any childcare related stuff ie ofsted, dbd,insurance etc and any other expenses

not sure of the % - do you know Nick?

then in april fill in form online, you will say what you earned gross employed and the tax you have paid,then what you earnt gross se, they work it all out and tell you how much you need to pay and then have till followng jan to pay it so 9mths, tho i often pay mine aug/sept

I would not bother with claiming a percentage of things as would be hard to justify that they were for the business. Things that are exclusively for the business would be permitted expenses, such as advertising.