There are a lot to think of and about when you are about to start your own business. One thing that many don’t like but need to deal with are taxes and VAT. If you don’t have enough knowledge about this you could lose a significant part of your profit. Or at least miss the optimizing possibility that exists if you just knew what to do and when to do it. I’m currently setting up my own business and part of this preparation process involves investigating all the tax rules and deductions and VAT-treatment and all those things.
A good place to start is freelancer
When you are about to start up but not sure if you have what it takes or just want to try it out without any risk or before you register your own company, you can try this terrific freelancer site which I use a lot myself. You can bid for projects and experience how it is to work as a freelancer. You can also invoice with Freelancer.com’s internal invoicing system. If you don’t like to be charged per word you can work for a specified fee per hour. A special program will capture screen dumps and log the time you are working on a project and then you can automatically create an invoice based on what the program has logged about your work. You will of course be able to take time-outs and stop the clock if nature calls if you know what I mean.
A background in accounting and finance helps
I have a master degree in Accounting and Finance to rely on but on these areas a lot happens every year and rules get changed, deleted or added. It’s a constant pain in the as to deal with all these regulations and taxes when you start you own business. But to help myself and others I have created a new site called momsens.se. On this site I will post new blog posts every other day about VAT and taxes focused on small business owners. I also run the English financial blog Accounting & Financle Blog here. As I research new topics I compile a summary for my self which I post in my blog. Iäm also trying to translate Swedish accounting information into Finnish with localization on my new Finnish accounting blog – AlvTieto.fi, hence I will not just help myself but I will rescue others from spending hours and hours trying to understand what the tax rules means in practise and how you account EU-VAT when you sell services abroad to another EU-country, and customers in the rest of the world as well.
Momsens.se is only intended for the Swedish speaking audience
I’m sorry for all English speaking visitors, the site momsens.se is only available in Swedish and targeted to Swedish circumstances specifically since it deals with VAT and Taxes from a Swedish perspective. You could always use Google translate and get a good grasp of what each page or blog post is about but it will be tailored to Swedish law and regulations that may, and probably will, differ significantly from your country’s rules for VAT and Taxes, but you are of course welcome to read it anyway 🙂
English Swedish translation 