Tax relief for home workers

Business owners who work from home should ensure they're not missing out on tax relief after HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) issued new guidlines allowing a proportion of household bills to be tax deductible.

A new range of allowable expenses has been introduced relating to 'fixed costs', which means that business owners who use their home as a workplace can now claim tax free relief on reasonable amounts of their mortgage interest, council tax, rent, home insurance and repairs and maintenance.

A percentage of household running costs may also qualify for tax relief including cleaning, heat, light and power, telephone, broadband and metered water charges.

To be eligible for the relief, an area of your home must be set aside exclusively for business purposes for a prescribed amount of time. According to HMRC "somebody who's working at their kitchen table or on their laptop in front of the TV" will not qualify. The amount claimed must also be "reasonable".

This means that even if you only use your home for minor business tasks like writing up records you can still claim tax relief, but it must reflect the actual amount of time worked at home. The amount of relief HMRC will allow is also based on the number of rooms in the house, excluding bathrooms, toilets, kitchens and hallways.

Full details and computations at http://hmrc.gov.uk

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Grandparents to be 'paid' to look after grandchildren

I'm in two minds over this one:

Firstly, great. It's about time all those wrinklies were compensated for all the school runs run and packed lunches packed.

However, isn't this another device that seperates parent from child, almost makes the split justifiable if the government can push childcare onto the grandparent. The other side of the coin is that this government, this society, is still forcing parents to work ridiculous hours under increasing stress just to be able to pay the bills. It's all set up to keep the wheels turning while generations of kids grow up without guidance or discipline.

What is needed is greater flexibility in the workforce, a greater focus on the needs of families not the bottom line, it's that bankers mindset that got us in this shit.

Break the cycle, you can have both family life and a career. Join the parent revolution.

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The Worst Three Outsourcing Cities for -

Corruption & Organized Crime

1. Bogota, Colombia
2. Juarez, Mexico
3. Johannesburg, South Africa

Heightening Trans-national & Geopolitical Issues

1. Delhi/Noida/Gurgaon, India
2. Jerusalem, Israel
3. Colombo, Sri Lanka

Unsecured or Unprotected Networks and Infrastructure

1. Bogota, Colombia
2. Bangkok, Thailand
3. Kingston, Jamaica

Unstable Currency

1. Bangkok, Thailand
2. Bogota, Colombia
3. Johannesburg, South Africa

Personal Crime Rate/Police-to-Citizen Ratio

1. Bangkok, Thailand
2. Johannesburg, South Africa
3. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Environmental Waste & Pollution

1. Bangalore, India
2. Chandigarh, India
3. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

High Terrorism/Rebel Target Threat

1. Mumbai, India
2. Delhi/Noida/Gurgaon, India
3. Jerusalem, Israel

Legal System Immaturity

1. Bangkok, Thailand
2. Bogota, Colombia
3. Kingston, Jamaica

Weather/Climate Threats

1. Kingston, Jamaica
2. Manila/Cebu/ Makati, Philippines
3. Bangkok, Thailand

Alternatively, you could outsource your freelance projects to a working parent in Leamington Spa

Thanks to http://www.cio.com

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The 25 Riskiest Outsourcing Hubs in the World

(Editor's note: Rankings based on mean scores in ten areas of risk as reported by The Brown-Wilson Group's "2009: The Year of Outsourcing Dangerously".)

1. Bogota, Colombia
2. Bangkok, Thailand
3. Johannesburg, South Africa
4. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
5. Kingston, Jamaica
6. Delhi/Noida/Gurgaon, India
7. Manila/Cebu/Makita, Philippines
8. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
9. Mumbai, India
10. Jerusalem, Israel
11. Curitiba, Brazil
12. Dalian, China
13. Juarez, Mexico
14. Brasilia, Brazil
15. Chandigarh, India
16. Colombo, Sri Lanka
17. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
18. Quezon City, Philippines
19. Accra, Ghana
20. Pune, India
21. Chennai, India
22. Hanoi, Vietnam
23. Bangalore, India
24. Hyderabad, India
25. Kolkata, India

Alternatively, you could outsource your freelance projects to a working parent in Leamington Spa

Thanks to http://www.cio.com

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Stay-At-Home Mums Leaving Home

The effects of the credit crunch march on with new figures revealing 70% of stay-at-home mums are looking to return early to full-time employment.

In doing this, of course, the children will have to be looked after by paid help, which is increasing in cost, and so most of the money earnt by returning to work is blown on childcare. And so the vicious circle continues.

Some parents try and break the cycle by setting up franchises or taking up work-from-home opportunities. Good luck to them but have you actually done the maths on some of these things, you can invest £1000's just to break even in the first few years, hardly beneficial to cash flow.

So what to do? Go to work and be skint or stay at home and be skint?

If you have marketable skills that you've spent years using and honing do you think there are businesses out there that could use those skills? Bloody right there is! Especially in this climate there are businesses that are screaming for all sorts of things that they want doing, from legal work to engineering, but they don't want to fork out for a full time employee.

Take a look at our website where we try to give parents looking for flexible work or a business opportunity another option in the work-life struggle that many are facing.

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Flexible Working Survey Reassures UK Companies

In a YouGov survey of over 2,000 parents currently working full-time, 17 per cent said they would definitely be making a flexible working request following the legislation, while 22 per cent were unsure. While the majority (61 per cent) intended to remain working full-time, the survey will make interesting reading for employers apprehensive about the number of requests set to come in.

Parents of children aged up to 16 now have the right to request flexible working, since the law was changed on April 6.

This previously applied to parents of children aged up to six, so 4.5 million parents have been encompassed by the change.

The survey was commissioned by workplace consultancy Croner, which argues that the finding should reassure bosses.

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