becoming self employed

cantdecide

hello all, a friend of mine is a mechanic and has been working away with a main dealer for the last few years. now he wants to go out on his own.

is there any advice you can give him to help him along? i don't know how much knowledge he has about starting a business.

he doesn't know how hard it would be to lease equipment, from whom, general finance- can the banks help?

is there grants available?

registering a company and related formalities?

any other thing that might help

JohnW

The best advice I can give is for him to get an accountant. They will do all the company registration stuff and can help with advice on leasing etc. My personal experience is that he will find it hard to get any equipment leased without 3 years of company accounts behind him

junkyard

If I was him I'd keep my day job and maybe work less days at my full time job and work away from home if thats what he's doing now. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was to register for VAT, its a total rip-off, you have to pay an accountant to do the governments work to pay them money. There are so many down sides I wish I had kept my micky mouse job and worked from home in the evenings and the weekends. There's always someone trying to shake your tree when your a small business, if its not the revenue its the banks and if its not the banks its some f**ker who doesn't want to pay his bill. My advice is think long and hard about it and I mean that genuinely.:(

Sonnenblumen

junkyard wrote:

If I was him I'd keep my day job and maybe work less days at my full time job and work away from home if thats what he's doing now. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was to register for VAT, its a total rip-off, you have to pay an accountant to do the governments work to pay them money. There are so many down sides I wish I had kept my micky mouse job and worked from home in the evenings and the weekends. There's always someone trying to shake your tree when your a small business, if its not the revenue its the banks and if its not the banks its some f**ker who doesn't want to pay his bill. My advice is think long and hard about it and I mean that genuinely.:(

If VAT charged on Sales is > VAT paid on Purchases = you pay difference to Collector General.

BUT, if your VAT on Purchases is > VAT on Sales= you are due a VAT Refund from Collector General.

Just simple arithmetic, no accountant required and certainly no rip off either!

Agree with your view, "Think long and hard about it" because it ain't for everyone!!

junkyard

Yeah but there's tax too to worry about and all the red tape nowadays thanks to the EU and remember as the downturn in the economy is happening all the red tape is here to stay, it just isn't worth the hassle anymore. I've my own business for the last 20 odd years and, if anything, its getting harder. The only businesses that made money in the last few years were people who sold property. Retail and services only made a fraction more as a result. As I said earlier think long and hard about it, the way to go is to work from home and look after your good customers and to hell with the rest of them. What will happen is you'll break your @rse trying to please everyone, you'll get swamped in work and your standards fall. As a result you'll end up employing someone, before you know it they're not pulling their weight and you'll end up finishing the jobs yourself, your employee is gone home for the weekend and your left working, soon you realise he's the only one making money out of your business. You'll burn your self out trying, believe me. As I always say you only begin to realise how many holidays there are when you have someone employed.