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I'm currently employed full time and plan to continue in that role, but start doing some consultancy work as a side line, to supplement my income, but with a view to that potentially being part of my route out of employment in the long term.
It's as much about having my own enterprise, job satisfaction, self worth and making best use of my skills/knowledge as it is the monetary aspect, though of course any extra dosh would be nice. Although my job pays well for the area and the terms are good, there's barely any job satisfaction, no incentive to do more than the bare minimum and a general culture of ambivalence/laziness/that'll do within my team/organisation, with no reward or recognition for excellence or putting any effort into the job. I think I'm in a fairly unique position and the potential is there to provide a service with a lot of value to potential customers in my industry. I'd have to declare any venture to my employer, and avoid any conflicts of interest/crossover with my current work. I see scope to partner with a number of associates/contacts within the industry with specialisms and almost act as an intermediary/facilitator, removing some traditional barriers and changing the way people do things, improving quality and modernising projects, but also removing unnecessary cost.
I'd be working from home predominantly, but also out with clients, including on their sites, I'd like to think I could establish in a fairly traditional way locally but perhaps tap into the online market too. It would be general advice/consultancy I'd offer but that may stray into some design/specification work, and there's the potential to route any practical work through this entity too, as I do still like to get my hands dirty.
So I'd need to sort out tax/NI, set up a separate bank account, and get some insurances in place, I know that much, plus comply with relevant regulation, data protection, industry memberships etc.
But how am I best structuring it, just as a sole trader? As a limited company? I'd not register for VAT initially I don't think as turnover would be well under the threshold and I see my primary customer base being private individuals.
Has anyone done anything similar or any accountants in the house who can offer advice? Any help gladly received!
When self employed I used to use a Ltd company structure - it is more expensive than sole tradership but a lot of my clients would only deal with Ltd companies.
I used to employ an accountant but now I'd probably use something like Sage and just pay an accountant to sign the accounts off.
Main issue I see is tax - self employed people have a tendency to forget about it, then they get a big bill from hmrc which they struggle to pay, so as a rule of thumb a third of your profits will need to be retained for HMRC.
I've since moved into a full time role - and the main benefit for me is that we have admin to do all this for us. I just found it a massive pain in the end.