How to register as self-employed

Are you self-employed?

HMRC’s guidance says that you are probably self-employed if you:

• run your business for yourself and take responsibility for its success or failure;
• have several customers at the same time;
• can decide how, where and when you do your work;
• can hire other people at your own expense to help you or to do the work for you;
• provide the main items of equipment to do your work;
• are responsible for finishing any unsatisfactory work in your own time;
• charge an agreed fixed price for your work;
• sell goods or services to make a profit (including through websites or apps).

Your legal obligations if you become self-employed

You will need to register as self-employed if you earned more than £1,000 from self-employment between 6 April 2018 and 5 April 2019. If this is the first time that you are required to submit a tax return, you must register by the 5 October in your business’s second tax year. This is not a deadline to ignore as there are penalties for late notification.

The newly self-employed must also register:

• to pay Class 2 & Class 4 National Insurance contributions (NICs) if applicable, and
• you should monitor your turnover as registration for VAT will be necessary if sales exceed £85,000 over the preceding twelve months or if you expect it to exceed this limit in the next three months.

If you are concerned that you may need to register as self-employed and are uncertain what to do, please call, we can take care of the formalities for you.