Temporarily self employed

If you earned less than £1,000 in self-employment income across the year, you may be able to make use of the Trading Allowance. If your annual gross trading income is £1,000 or less, you may not need to tell HMRC, declare the income on a tax return or pay tax on it.

If your income is more than that, you will need to pay tax on it. Normally, newly self employed people would need to register as self-employed. But as you were only temporarily self-employed, I would recommend you instead phone HMRC. If you can give them the dates of your self employment and detail what income you earned, they may be prepared to collect the tax through your tax code with your current job. This would avoid you registering and the need for a tax return and mean that you pay your tax bill throughout the year; rather than leaving it until January.

Date published 9 Oct 2018

This article is intended to inform rather than advise and is based on legislation and practice at the time. Taxpayer’s circumstances do vary and if you feel that the information provided is beneficial it is important that you contact us before implementation. If you take, or do not take action as a result of reading this article, before receiving our written endorsement, we will accept no responsibility for any financial loss incurred.