With summer coming back, many people are probably thinking about developing their professional career on their own. However, being self-employed is not an easy path . The life of a self-employed person has little to do with that of an employee. You are your own boss and you decide the course your ship will take.
However, the margin of error that a freelancer can allow himself is very small. Would you like to know which mistakes you should never make? Below, we detail 10 mistakes that can make you fail as a freelancer .
1. Relying on a single client
It doesn't matter if that one client brings us a very high turnover. Consider what would happen if we lost that one client. We would be lost and overwhelmed. That's why, if we are self-employed, we have to look for different sources of income .
2. Prepare the quarter at the last minute
Whoever said "haste is never good" spoke a true truth. Whether we are responsible for submitting the forms ourselves or an agency does it for us, we should never wait to submit all the paperwork, invoices, etc., days before the deadline.
If we do it ourselves, we will avoid many problems if we account for all sales invoices or expenses on a weekly basis. As for our tax advisor, he will not be able to help us insurance email list much if we bring him the "heap" of papers at the last minute. He will not be able to help us and advise us with all the mess they have on key dates.
Furthermore, if we submit the self-assessment forms before the deadline, we will have time to submit a supplementary declaration in case we realize that we have made a mistake.
3. Capitalize unemployment benefits after registering with Social Security
It may be that our idea is to request the one-off unemployment payment to start and capitalize the business. However, if we do so after registering with Social Security, we will lose the right to capitalize unemployment. As a self-employed person, it may not make us fail, but it will make all our investments or plans for our new business fail without being able to count on that small capital.
4. Do not ask for invoices
It is very important to request invoices for expenses related to the activity in order to be able to deduct them . For example, if you are going to need a car for work, as self-employed people we can deduct it as long as we have the invoice in our name. We will be throwing money away if we do not do this and do not deduct it. It would be just as bad to deduct these expenses without a receipt or invoice. During an inspection, we will surely be made to pay the VAT that we are deducting because we do not have the proper invoice.