Paying tax on babysitting.

[scrablet]

I am a registered babysitter and work through an agency. When I started I also was doing supply teaching, so was taxed through PAYE for that, but have not taught more than three days this year, 2012, and none this tax year so far.
The babysitting is minimum wage...£6.10 per hour and I generally do 6-8 hours per week, obviously this varies but that is a rough average.

My question is, where and how do I declare this? Do I just phone up the Inland revenue and ask them to send me forms. Am I technically self employed? I do not pay anything to the agency, and the parents pay me cash, and they also pay a finding fee to the agency.

I do not want to end up owing money.

This has started worrying me probably out of all proportion to the money I have been paid, which probably works ou around £100-£150 per month, give or take.

Yes, you are technically self-employed. As HMRC and they'll register you as such and probably ask you to fill in a self-assessment form at some point. You don't earn anything like the personal allowance threshold ... £8,105 for the 12/13 tax year.... so you won't be liable for income tax if you keep earning at the same level.

Thanks Cogito,will get in touch with HMRC asap.
Wonder if my travel can be written off as legitimate expense? Would be able to take more jobs if so...

You are not necessarily self employed as a babysitter, basically it all hinges around whether you can be said to be "in business".

As you are presumably not advertising yourself (just taking work from Sitters or whoever), and earning less than £150 a month I don't think anyone could view you as being in business, so I wouldn't bother registering as self employed unless you want the benefit of credit towards your pension and eligibility for maternity allowance.

You should tell HMRC that you are earning money from occasional babysitting and they may ask you to fill in a tax return. You may want to ask to fill in a tax return anyway as you may have a tax refund due from your supply teaching, and you can probably offset travel expenses both for the supply teaching and babysitting against income to reduce your tax bill, although as you need to earn over £8,000 before you pay tax in 2012/13 you will have to be doing a lot more work before this becomes important.

Wow,thanks MrAnchovy.
So it seems my best bet is to at least contact HMRC and let them decide if I need a tax return.
I do not advertise myself, and do not imagine I could be considered to be in business.
I did have a tax refund last year from teaching, but I think that was just part of the general clearing up they seemed to be doing last year.