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Thanks all for the advice so far.
To James and Mandy, i do fully agree that going with a professional accountant is generally worthwhile, and I’d be doing that as long as I was hitting >10K in income (or if one of the grant applications comes through). However, having just started the company and expecting minmal income before tax time, it seems that accounting fees would eat up the majority of the income. I’m not paying any staff, and just have a couple of clients at this stage so book-keeping and tax should all be very straight-forward, but I have not found that accounting fee structures allow for this, they all start quite high and assume relatively higher complexity. Do any accountants offer reasonably priced products for a simple microbusiness such as this?
I do get Mandy’s point of thinking of these costs as an investment, I’ll certainly think on that some more but in general i would rather accept those higher costs once i have more confidence that the company can endure.
In terms of tax time, some options I have found are ‘lodgeit’ and ‘taxopia’, these offer relatively low cost assistance with company tax lodgement, and i can use something like freshbooks to keep track of things.
If anyone has experience with lodgeit or taxopia then I would welcome any comments there.
bb1, i disagree with you regarding side hustles, in my case (and I’m sure for many people) I simply don’t currently have the resources to commit all of my time. However, potential extra income from this side hustle will help be to build the resources for growth there, and to move towards my bigger ideas, likewise, if i am successful in one of the research grant applications then i want instantly have those resources (but as mentioned, they require a company to apply). The alternative is to build up capital through my day job so i can eventually fully commit to building the company, but that delay could lead to missed opportunities for me. I am in the tech area and there are more than a few examples of very succesful businesses that started out as side hustles (Apple, Facebook, Twitter etc.)