Tax Return for Tutors

For those who really love teaching, becoming a private tutor is probably the most popular route to being an educator, whether it’s part time for some extra money, or as a full-time career.

Qualifications

Like many other trades and professions, you don’t actually need to have any qualifications to call yourself, and work as, a tutor. You’ll obviously need expertise in the area you want to teach in, which could come from first-hand experience or through training. Though you don’t strictly need qualifications to become a tutor, the more training and experience you have, the easier it’ll be to secure tutoring jobs. The private tutoring market is competitive, and the better you are at it, the more you can expect to be paid.

Do you have what it takes to be a tutor?

It doesn’t matter what you want to teach, all tutors need certain skills and qualities to be great at what they do.
You’ll need to:

  • Be an expert: As a freelance tutor, you’ll most likely be teaching in your students’ homes, making them more likely to ask detailed questions than if they were in a classroom with 30 other students.
  • Be patient: Your students require you as a tutor because they’re struggling to learn something, so you’ll need patience to teach them.
  • Be a great communicator: You’ll need to explain complex ideas in simple English to ensure the student has a better chance of understanding and learning.
  • Love teaching: One of the most important qualities in great tutors is that they love teaching. Your love of teaching will spread to your students, making them enjoy the teaching session more, so they’ll find it easier to learn.

Benefits of being a freelance tutor

There are many benefits being a freelance tutor has over working as a full time employee:

  • Flexibility: work for who you want to work for, and when you want to work
  • Doing a job you love, with huge satisfaction
  • he tax benefits being a freelancer brings
  • And more…

How to find work as a freelance tutor

Though word of mouth is the best way of finding work as a freelance tutor, in the beginning of your freelance career, you won’t know many people. Fortunately, there are many other ways of finding new business:

  • Have a professional website/join Linkedin: You’ll look more credible and legitimate with an online presence.
  • Contact local schools: If any of the parents of a school’s pupils ask about private tutors, they may refer them to you.
  • Nurseries and play groups: Get to know some of the parents. They could be
    looking for a tutor for their children, or know somebody else who’s looking.
  • Run free seminars in local companies, showing them the benefits of extra tuition for themselves or for their children.

Accounting as a freelance private tutor

There are various benefits to freelancing as a private tutor, from the freedom and flexibility to work with a variety of individuals to more take home pay. But there is one downside – accounting. As a full-time employee, your tax is usually taken care of on your behalf in the form of PAYE. As a freelancer you’ll have to keep a range of financial records and then prepare and pay a Self-Assessment tax return at the end of each business year. Accountancy can be very confusing and can distract you from your tutoring work.

Getting tax and accountancy advice

With most accountants, you’ll pay them to do your year-end accounts, and then they’ll forget about you until the next year.
But for your business to be run smoothly and successfully, you’ll need advice on tax and accountancy throughout the year, especially in the early days.

Citi Accounts is different

Citi Accounts provides an affordable and specialist accountancy service designed just for freelancers. Throughout the year we’ll be on hand to give you any tax and accountancy advice you might need, including things like

  • Take-home pay
  • Which VAT scheme to register for
  • Expenses
  • Tax allowances
  • Choosing between sole trader and limited company
  • Running your business in a tax-efficient way

We charge for our accountancy services in a clear and simple way, which means you’ll never receive an unexpected bill, and you can get in touch for advice whenever you want without the worry of being charged a fortune like you would from many other accountants