Tax and Business registration (UK) (5)
At what point is it advisable to start setting up a tax, business and banking structure. Being new to IM I'm just signing up to the affiliate networks as an individual and paying for advertising straight out of my personal account, I'm not registered for tax or VAT yet in anyway. This means I'm currently wasting 20% of all spending on POF simply because I don't have a VAT I.D. Looking through the few threads I could find on UK tax etc, it seems the advice is to register a limited company and get registered for tax. Ideally employing an accountant.
With a limited budget though and given I've so far only just dipped my toes in to IM, should I be more worried about getting my marketing skills nailed down first. Or is the structural side of things a priority. It just seems crazily confusing given how insignificant ( 
) my earnings are at the moment.
worry about it when you start making money and are sure that your ability to create a profitable campaign is not a one hit wonder...
Yep, start working on that once you have a campaign or two stable.
Setting up a company is not that much of a hassle in the UK, but it'll set you back a few hundred pounds, and the VAT registration a bit more than that, between company setup fees and accountancy. It's also a significant pain in the arse to get a bank account set up for a new company.
Ok cheers guys much appreciated. Any chance you've ever heard of a temporary way around the VAT payments on advertising or is it just one to suck up and chalk down to paying for an education?
Suck it up, I'm afraid.
Do not attempt to mess around with VAT, beyond the basic advice an accountant will give you.
HMRC have a bigger budget and more people dedicated to catching you doing that than you do dedicated to avoiding them catching you.
It may be worth doing a quick calculation right now based on your available budget - if 17% of the budget you're planning to spend on learning comes to more than about £500, you might well do better to just get a limited company and VAT registration set up now.
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