After a good first year of freelancing, the January bill is the tax for that year plus a first payment on account towards the next — half as much again — with a second payment due in July. It is not an extra tax, it can be reduced if your income falls, and it needs planning for. The detail is on our self-assessment page.

• Self-assessment tax returns in Finchley

Working from home has a proper method as well as the flat rate, and for anyone using a decent share of the property the calculated figure is usually higher. Equipment, software subscriptions, professional memberships, insurance, and training that maintains an existing skill are all allowable. Travel to a client is; commuting to one regular place of work generally is not.

The rule people get wrong most often is clothing: it is only allowable where it is genuinely not ordinary clothing, which excludes almost everything except protective wear and costume.

• Self-assessment tax returns
• Contractors and IR35
• Start-ups and new companies
• Accountants in Hornsey
• Accountants in Muswell Hill

If you work for yourself from home in N8 — as a writer, designer, editor, therapist, photographer, consultant or musician — almost every tax question is about a boundary: between the household bill and the business one, between travel that counts and travel that does not, between a tool and a personal purchase. Those boundaries are where returns go wrong.

Travel when you have no fixed workplace

Commuting is not deductible, but that turns on what counts as your normal place of work. If you genuinely work from home and travel out to clients, those journeys are usually business travel rather than commuting. Get the characterisation right at the start and the claim is straightforward.

A lot of creative and consulting work in N8 comes through agencies or production companies, and that changes the question from ‘what can I claim’ to ‘who is responsible for deciding my status’. The off-payroll rules put that decision with the end client in many cases, and the answer determines whether you are paid gross, taxed at source, or somewhere in between.

What we see most often is somebody being told a determination has been made without being told what it was based on, and simply accepting the deduction. It is worth reading. A status decision is a judgement about how you actually work — substitution, control, mutuality of obligation — not a label applied to a whole sector, and it can be questioned.

• Contractors and IR35
• Self-assessment accountant
• Start-ups and new companies

Most freelancers in Crouch End never think about VAT until a good year brings it up. You must register once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 over any rolling 12 months, or when you expect to pass it in the next 30 days on its own. The test is a rolling one, not the tax year, so a single large commission can trigger it mid-year.

Whether registration hurts depends on who you invoice. Businesses can reclaim the 20% you add, so they barely notice. Private clients, charities and some public bodies cannot, so for them your price rises in effect. Registered businesses keep digital records and file through Making Tax Digital for VAT.

The Flat Rate Scheme is often suggested to freelancers because it is simple. But anyone who spends very little on goods, which describes most designers, writers and consultants, counts as a limited cost trader and pays 16.5% of gross turnover. That can leave you worse off than ordinary VAT accounting. We work out both before you choose.

Crouch End is one of the Haringey-side areas we cover. Our page for accountants in North London sets out the full range of what we do.

• Accountants in North London
• VAT services
• VAT Flat Rate Scheme

Crouch End has no Underground station. The nearest rail stations are Crouch Hill on the Overground (Suffragette line), just over the boundary in Islington, and Hornsey on Great Northern. For the Northern line, Highgate and Archway are two and three stops from Finchley Central.

You do not have to come in: you can work with us entirely by phone, email and video call, and we respond within one working day.

Crouch End is in the London Borough of Haringey, so Haringey Council sends your business rates bill and deals with premises licences, street trading and planning. None of that goes on a tax return, but rates are a fixed cost that can be relieved or appealed, and licence fees and timings belong in any plan for opening or changing premises.

Small business rate relief is set nationally and applied by the council: a business with one property whose rateable value is below £15,000 can get relief, and below £12,000 the relief is 100%. Taking on a second property can take it away from the first, so it is worth checking before you sign a lease rather than after the bill arrives.

• Haringey Council: business rates
• Haringey Council: small business rate relief
• Haringey Council: licensing

The services we provide in Crouch End include personal tax and self-assessment, bookkeeping, payroll and year-end accounts and corporation tax. Each has its own page with what is included and how we work.