Interview with a Calculator

Jason is a desktop calculator. He has been a desktop calculator for an accountant for coming up to 10 years. Before being purchased by his owner, he lived in a box in an Amazon warehouse for several years. Here he tells us about his typical day in an accountancy practice and working from home.

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The Highly Profitable Accountant

The Highly Profitable Accountant – Take Control of Your Practice, Make More Money and Get Your Life Back by Rudi Jensen

This book is aimed at people who own their own accountancy practice. It looks into how you can transform your practice so that it is both more profitable and you get freedom from it. It is split up into two parts. Part one about being a better you and working on your mindset. It encourages you to really explore what it is you want out of life and your practice, before working on how to go about it in part two.

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The Numbers Business – Della Hudson

This is the book I wished I had when I first started working for myself with big dreams of starting my own accountancy firm. For anyone who is dreaming of starting an accountancy practice, especially if they are considering doing it on a part-time basis around school runs, this book provides the most useful information I have ever read and is very inspiring.

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Accounting for Bloggers – free download

February turned into an ‘Accounting for Bloggers’ month on my site. As a blogger, that might be the last thing you want to do. In reality, apart from accountants, who really wants to think about accounts? Still, if you have decided to monetise your blog and it is creeping over the £1,000 mark, you may need to start considering your tax position.

If you missed February’s Accounting for Bloggers month, don’t worry. This post will summarise everything that was covered in the four-part series.

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Accounting for Bloggers – Part 2

The last blog looked at some of the more common allowable expenses.  You can click on this link if you missed it.  In this blog I will look at some of the ways you can record your income and expenses. 

Most people are familiar with spreadsheets and this is possibly the easiest and most cost effective way to do it.  You can use the first page to record the income, the second page for expenses and if you wish, although not necessary, a third page as a summary. 

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Accounting for Bloggers – Part 1

Accounting for bloggers is a four part series starting with a post on allowable expenses.

Whether you have just started blogging or you have been blogging for a while, one of the things that you need to think about is money.  This four part series will look into how you can start getting organised and be prepared for any tax liabilities.

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National Insurance Recap

 

London Landscape

National Insurance Class 2 will be abolished from April 2019. So with only a year left and if you have been self employed at any point in the year, now is a good time to make voluntary payments via Class 2 in order to top up any shortfalls, if for example, you do not have your full 35 years of state pension.  This works out to be cheaper than paying the voluntary Class 3 NI.

Here is a recap on all the different National Insurance and what they mean:

Class 1

National Insurance Class 1 is the national insurance due by employed workers as long as certain conditions are met. It is paid by the employer through the payroll. Read about this in more detail in my previous post here:-

National Insurance Class 1

Class 2

Class 2 is the national insurance paid by self employed workers. You do not have to pay Class 2 if you earn less than £6,205. This is however, going to be abolished from April 2019 so you only have a short time to make any voluntary contributions to make up any gaps in your NI history. You can read more about Class 2 below:

The Pain of Class 2 National Insurance

Class 3

Class 3 National Insurance is a voluntary contribution that needs to be paid if you have gaps in your NI history. You need to pay 35 years of national insurance to be entitled to full state pension.

Why Pay Class 3 National Insurance Contribution?

Class 4

Class 4 national insurance is the NI paid by self employed workers when they have profits above £8,424. You can read more about Class 4 NI below:

Class 4 NI and your profits

 

Feel free to get in touch if you have any queries.

Tax-Return-Checklist

As usual, if you would like any further details on this or any other accountancy matters, please follow this link:

And your quarterly tax calendar for 2018 can be downloaded here:

Tax dates