Full-time employee and 'as-needed' self-employed - can this be combined?

relichd

Hi,

I work for a small company for almost five years now. I have always wanted to do something else though (currently working as an IT support technician). To make my life a bit more fun I'd like to formalize my passion for photography on a 'as-needed' self employed basis, ie. anytime I get a photographic job to do, I'd do it and charge for it... I'd like to do it as a sole trader with a registerred company name.

What's puzzling on this is that I don't know how would this work from the tax/VAT, PRSI and USC point of view. I read loads of materials on revenue and citizenship information websites but none of them seems to explain any of my needs...

Anybody here would have similar experience? How did you deal with it? Is it worth it? Thanks for any thoughts on this one.

David.

greendom

There's not an awful lot to consider I think. If you need a lot of equipment to get started you might want to consider registering for VAT as you could then claim the vat back on those items. Then again once registered, you would have to charge vat even if you weren't at the threshold. (37500 turnover I think)

Apart from that you would need to send a tax return in with your additional self-employed income included. You might want to get an accountant to do this part for you if it looked to complicated interms of what you owed on PRSI, USC etc

relichd

Thanks! Doesn't sound that complicated when you put it like this