Regrettably here in England we have to pay tax.
One of the first things you’ll need to do after you decide to start a pressure washing company is to register as self-employed.
If you live in the UK the place to visit is here. This is a link to HM Revenue and Customs (the people you have to pay tax to) homepage.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/index.htm
This is a link to the self-employed section of HM Revenue and Customs website.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/selfemployed/index.shtml
If you happen to live outside of Great Britain then I can’t help you as I don’t know how the taxation system works elsewhere, although if you happen to be an extremely lucky git and live in tax-free Monaco, please shoot yourself.
After you’ve registered as self-employed, you should be sent information about how to go about keeping records for your business, and how you are going to be paying your taxes in future.
Here though are some basic guidelines:
Expenses
It is important that you keep the receipts from any tools you buy for your new pressure washing business; hoses, connectors, the actual pressure washer, petrol etc.
Earnings
You will need to obviously keep a record of what you earn. Because a lot of the money you will be receiving will be cash you might be tempted to skim off the top what you really earn. I wouldn't recommend this myself. I think it's much easier to sleep at night if you know you run a honest business, but it's your company so I guess it is up to you.
Again, remember keep it simple, have a table with three columns. One for earnings, one for expenses, and one for the dates of the week in question.
Date..............................................Earnings...................................Expenses
19 Feb 09- 25 Feb 09 ....................£550.50..................................£20.00
As you can see it is fairly straight forward. You could get an accountant to do it all for you but I really don't see the point in forking out for one for a small time, start up pressure washing company. Maybe once you become a multi-national corporation then you can think of hiring someone else to keep track of the books, but till then you're probably best off doing it yourself.
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