As it’s St Patrick’s Day on Monday I thought a few thoughts on trafficking, sex work, nuns and the rescue industry, might be in order. Interesting guy St Patrick. We don’t know a lot about him – where or when he was born, whether or how he banished snakes from Ireland – but he did write …
Review of ‘Regina v Vagina’ by Angela Nangle Just occasionally Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs do something thoroughly unreasonable and counter-productive; and when they do there is usually a politician or a lawyer somewhere behind it. The villains of this piece are Gordon Brown and Lord Grabiner QC. You’ve probably never heard of Lord Grabiner. …
Few of us want the details of our personal finances shared with our employers, and escorts have more reason than most for keeping them confidential. If you’re worried that telling the tax man about your escorting business will result in your employer finding out, well you’re not alone. Here’s a question I was asked last …
Here’s a tricky question about the very practical issue of whether you can claim payments to your driver as a business expense, and if so what records should you keep. Hi there, I’m an escort working mainly for an agency. I’m declared self employed and trying to fill in my tax return for last year. …
Today we’re starting a new series of articles debunking some of the myths and misconceptions about tax that I’ve come across while lurking on message boards, talking to escorts or simply eavesdropping on drunken conversations in pubs. This first myth concerns how much detail you have to give HMRC each year about your expenses, and whether you have …
Most accountants (other than Colonel “Mad Mike” Hoare, the mercenary and Chartered Accountant, who was eventually struck off after his conviction for leading an unsuccessful coup against the government of the Seychelles) are far more likely to be thought dull than dangerous. So it was a surprise to find that at least one member of the Scottish Parliament wants …
A computer, or at the very least access to the internet, is a necessity for anyone working as an independent escort. So if you buy a laptop can you treat is as a business expense and claim relief? Or will the tax man deny you tax relief because there is personal non-business use as well? …
If you run your escorting (or other sex-work) business from home you are entitled to deduct from your income the expenses that are ‘wholly and exclusively incurred’ as a result of using your home. The question is: what expenses can be included, how do you work out how much you can claim, and are there …
To anybody who finds themselves continually putting off doing their tax return, can I recommend you set aside just half an hour and waste invest it in watching the very first episode of Black Books in which foul-tempered bookshop owner Bernard Black (Dylan Moran) struggles to complete his tax return after his dodgy accountant goes on …
I don’t normally blog about political stuff because this is not a campaigning web site. However I thought it would be useful to publish my response to the current proposal that seeks to make it a criminal offence to pay for sexual services in Scotland. So here is a copy of the submission I’ve made to Rhoda …
