TAXXXX

Okay, so no tag or image for this one, and it will be suprisingly brief.

The rules on tax have changed since the recession got serious, and these changes have been snuck under the radar due to the current "OMG EXPENSES" row and my personal favourite "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE OF PIGFLU".

You do not have to register as self employed until you turn your comic into a business, as opposed to a source of extra income as this guide suggests. I will deal with the whole business aspect of it here when it comes to it, I don't want to scare off my readers.

Basically you can apply to exempt yourself from paying National Insurance tax if your earnings are below five thousand pounds in a financial year. You may also get TAX RELIEF for earnings in the same bracket, and even though you will still have to send of a check every april to cover your income tax, you will get some if not all of it back. If this confuses you as much as it did me, then you need to go to your local Citizen's Advice Beaureu and ask for more information and some help on the matter. There should be a financial adviser there to talk you through it, primarily because they want to get their hands on your tax cash as fairly and as quickly as possible.

If you are on benefits, you definately need to go to Citizen's advice before earning a single goddess blasted penny. You can now go to jail for a very long time for benefit fraud and trust me: modern jails are just as bad as the old time ones, except now there is more to make a shiv from thanks to the Home Office.

I will update here as to my own personal adventures with the Inland Revenue and some tips learned the hard way.

Luff and stuff - Ree

PS: the credit you earn from advertisers cannot be taxed, but they do have limits on how much you can store on their system and how much you can buy out at a time. So my advice is: if you cant cash it, spend it on advertising campaigns so when you can cash it, you can cash more.