Bless my mum. An accountant to the core, she’s encouraging me to get GST registered so I can claim expenses and depreciation and whatnot for when I work from home.
It all sounds way too complicated for my liking and I’m tempted to put it in the too-hard basket. But apparently I can list things like part of my rent, phone bill, depreciation on my laptop, computer paper and who knows what else. As I understand it, I charge GST, then claim it back somehow…and I assume, sometimes end up paying taxes, and maybe sometimes not, if it evens out?
March saw me doing some extra freelancing, which cost me some phone calls on my own time (anyone in NZ will know how outrageous mobile call pricing here is. And some of it didn’t even end up making it to print – there wasn’t enough room. Ah, how spoilt we are in the infinite world of online. At least I got paid for it all nonetheless). And it’s possible I may be doing some more of that in the future.
So setting up as a GST contractor could be quite handy. I’m looking into it…but not making any promises. Having my taxes all taken care of for me before I see it is just so easy, you know?
Anyone have any experience with this kind of stuff?
I dunno how NZ works… but to claim GST and whatnot, don’t you have to be incorporated first as a company?
PS-I think you mean “facepalm” heh. Not faceplant.
Indeed, I meant facepalm (Rushing a post is never good!)
I think you can just be a GST registered individual (contractor). Am looking through the booklets now. Might do a bit of a miniseries as I go along
[…] May 18, 2010 So after a lot of time spent trying to wrap my head around the intricacies of our tax system, I’ve decided not to go ahead with GST registration. […]