A Freelancer’s and Consultant’s Guide to Using Taxumo

Think about all the attention given to the following:

  • Decluttering your closet and keeping and displaying things that bring you joy…
  • Following the footsteps of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg when they only have one style of shirt or attire…
  • The rise of planners and productivity apps that help you with time management.

All of these “hacks” introduced to us because man has finally realised that TIME is the most important asset.

And this realisation is what makes most entrepreneurs, freelancers and business owners successful. They never WASTE time. It’s more important than money. This is why service apps like GRAB, and even Upwork thrive, because successful people know that money is something that you can earn back but when you lost time, it’s lost forever.

This is the reason why Taxumo exists as well. If you value your time, and if you’d much rather spend your time earning money than computing your taxes or lining up at the RDO or the bank, this application is for you. We exist for people who see that they would much rather outsource computing, filing and paying to a system or application than spending time figuring out how to file and pay or when to file and to pay. It’s basically Taxumo giving you that gray sweater of Bill Gates and all you need to do is to wear it 🙂 haha! 

To make it even more convenient for you, freelancer or consultant, I have made this step by step guide on how to start using Taxumo and how to maximise using Taxumo.

SETTING UP A TAXUMO ACCOUNT FOR FREELANCERS OR CONSULTANTS

Sign up to Taxumo using these settings (Yup, just copy your Certificate of Registration). Here is a sample Certificate of Registration and see the parts. It contains the Tax Type that you need to file.

If you don’t have this, check out Taxumo’s Business Registration Service for Freelancers. Click here: https://www.taxumo.com/business-registration/freelancer

Have your COR by your side when you set up your Taxumo account. If you don’t have it while setting up, it’s okay. You can still change the details later on. Copy EXACTLY what is written in your COR. Example, if the Taxpayer’s Name in your COR is Arboleda, Ginger Palma, please copy it as is in Taxumo.

As you can see, you can turn the notifications (email notifications) on and off. We highly suggest that you turn these on.

For your Business Profile (see image above), just copy the line of business in your COR. For “I want to file my Taxes From”, place the date when you received your Certificate of Registration OR place the date when you want to start filing with Taxumo (if you’v been filing taxes manually before).

For Freelancers / Consultants who earn below Php 3 Million Gross Revenue or Gross Sales a year, the above settings are the suggested settings. Just copy it.

Business Type: You are providing services

Income Source: Income from Profession BUT if you are still employed AND doing consultancy / freelance work on the side, choose “Mixed from Business and Employment”.

Income Tax Rate Type: If you earn below Php 3 Million Gross Revenue or Gross Sales a year and have minimal business expenses, we suggest that you choose the 8% Flat income tax rate option.

TaxPayer’s Type: Choose Professional

Deduction Method: Just choose Optional Standard Deduction but this won’t matter when the system computes your income tax since you chose 8%.

For each year also, Taxumo allows you to save a business setting! 🙂 So cool! Since you can only change Deduction methods and income tax rate types at the beginning of the year, you can choose and save settings for each year.

And for the last part of the settings page, choose and highlight (color aqua) the taxes that you need to pay. Again, based this on your Certificate of Registration. Then upload your COR and your Digital Signature (which is both optional at this point).

VERY IMPORTANT: Please don’t forget to click on SAVE for every YEAR – Business profile that you set!

ENCODING INCOME AND EXPENSES AS A FREELANCER OR CONSULTANT

The next step is to encode your income and expenses. Click on Cashflow on the left side of the screen, and this is what you’ll see (empty cashflow tab). You can look for entries that you have encoded before by clicking on show filter. To add income, click on the “Add Button”.

This is how an empty Cashflow view looks like.

Each income entered in Taxumo should match an official receipt that you prepared for your client. The OR/SI number portion is the OR number of that transaction. For freelancers/consultants, always choose Sales – Services.

Business Name here is the name of your client. For foreign clients who don’t care about ORs, you don’t need to send them a copy of the official receipt. Just keep it in your booklet.

For expenses, those expenses that you can justify to be part of the delivery of your services is what you can encode. Please make sure that the receipts are under your Tax Payer’s Name (especially for expenses that are Php 1000 and above in amount). For transportation and foreign system invoices, please save emails as PDF and save it in your computer. You can also upload it to Taxumo as backup.

PRO TIP: Encode both income and expenses on a daily basis. This will allow you to maximize Taxumo’s Real Time Tax Calculation tool. You can see how much taxes you need to pay at any given time (para hindi kayo nabibigla when tax due dates come).

FILING TAXES

To file taxes, be sure that you are done encoding your income and expenses for the applicable period. Go to the Tax Dues tab and you’ll see all the tax cards with the Tax Dues and the deadlines.

Click on the file button and pay your taxes. Taxumo will then show you a summary of that tax.

If there are things that you need to change, you can go to your settings page. Some fields are also editable here.

For paying your taxes, you need not go to a bank within the city of your revenue district office. You can pay using any of these available channels.

  • Grabpay
  • Debit or Credit Card
  • PayPal
  • Mobile or Online Banking
  • Bank over the counter or Non-Bank over the counter like Bayad Center, SM Payment Counters, Robinsons, 7-11, etc.

PRO TIP: If you have chosen Dragonpay, please ALWAYS check your email for the completion of payment. They will send instructions for you to complete your payment.

Once you have successfully filed and paid for your taxes, you can visit the Past Filings tab on your Tax Dues tab.

If you see “Unpaid filings”, these are the tax cards that you have clicked but have not yet paid for. All you need to do is to click on CANCEL FILING so that the tax card returns to the CURRENT FILINGS TAB.

If you have successfully files and paid for a tax card, it will be marked COMPLETED (it will be marked temporarily IN PROGRESS for 2-3 days before it will say COMPLETED). Once marked completed, you can download and save the copy of the (1) form (click on view form and then click print form — print to PDF if you want to save it in your computer), (2) Download the BIR Confirmation and (3) Download and save the tax payment record.

It’s important to save backups of these in your computer. An OC person like me always want to have “back-ups” for everything. 🙂

After this, you can sit back and relax!!! Fun times!

If you want to maximize your Taxumo subscription, here are some things that you may not know about Tauxmo…

  1. If you receive 2307 forms, you can encode them directly to Taxumo’s Withheld Taxes tab (received tab) and the system will consider it when it computes your Income Tax return. Some people don’t know that these “attachments” should also be submitted and declared to BIR using another system called Alphalist Data Entry and Validation Module. Failure to submit these will also incur penalties.
  2. For your manual books of accounts, you will need to update them frequently. When a BIR examiner visits you, s/he will check if your books are updated. If you don’t know how to update your books, worry no more as Taxumo’s Books of Accounts view formats your entries in columns and all you need to do is copy these entries to your manual books.
  3. If you need to pay SSS voluntary contributions or loan payments, you can click on Pay bills. Compared to other systems, Taxumo already generates the PRN or the payment reference number for you which you can get also from the SSS site. You need not shift from one site to the other.
  4. Entries are exportable and downloadable via Taxumo’s Books of Accounts view. All income is under cash receipt and all expenses are under cash disbursements.
  5. You can give access or delegate access to two more people. Example, if you are using an accountant or bookkeeper, you can give one access to him or her.

Rest assured that Taxumo is constantly innovating and looking for ways that can help you become more productive as a freelancer or consultant.

For Taxumo’s pricing for their subscription plans, click on this link: https://www.taxumo.com/taxumo-pricing/

For those who copied the 8% option above, pricing is at Php 700 per month or at Php 10,000 for a year’s access.

For those with a lot of expenses and who would like to opt for the Graduated Income Tax Table — OSD or Itemized Deduction, pricing is at Php 1500 per month or at Php 20,000 for a year’s access.

If you have any more questions on how to use Taxumo, feel free to leave a comment or message me through https://www.facebook.com/mommyginger/.

MythBuster: Why You Need to Pay Your Taxes as a Freelancer

Are you one of those freelancers who still ask why you need to pay your taxes?

I have heard many freelancers express their fear and disappointment about paying their taxes. “Why should we pay when we don’t have a stable income?” “Why should we pay when we can hide what we earn since we earn online?… the government doesn’t have to know!” Well, for the record, it’s not only freelancers who feel this way. For the longest time, this has been the sentiment of Filipinos in general.

It’s tough to live in a country where tax laws are so complicated. These laws are so complicated that you end up not paying at all. It’s difficult balancing understanding taxation with looking and working for clients as a freelancer. There’s just not enough time.

If you are facing these same dilemma as a freelancer, then I am here to tell you that there is nothing to fear. Instead of thinking of all of the disadvantages, let me share with you why I pay taxes as a freelancer. Let me give you the lo down why it’s actually beneficial to pay taxes and become “legit” self-employed individuals.

Enjoy your income! Enjoy being a Freelancer.

What good is hard-earned money when you can’t enjoy it. We all want to travel, have cars, own a house, etc. But in order to get our VISA approved or our car or home loans approved, we need to show proof of income. Since we are not “employed”, we don’t have a payslip to show or a Certificate of Employment to present. The chances that our VISA will be denied is high.

When you regularly pay your taxes as a freelancer, you have your tax forms that you can show as supporting document when you apply for a VISA or for loans. Your chances to get approved are higher, and you don’t have to worry about not ever having any proof of income. Remember though that you need to be a regular and consistent tax payer, meaning you have tax forms for every kind of tax that you need to pay and you never skipped filing / paying your taxes. To make it easier for you, you can check out https://www.taxumo.com to help you with your taxes.

 

Easily verify your PayPal account and will never encounter problems if your Business Documents are in place

PayPal is now strict when it comes to presenting proof of your existence. PayPal will require you now to present these “proofs”. This I think is a good move. This keeps all scammers away and protects all of us non-scammers! Here are the requirements from PayPal.

Proof of Identity: Present a valid proof of identity

PayPal accepts a copy of:

  – Your national ID card (front and back),

  – Your driving license (front and back),

  – Your Passport, or

  – Other photo ID that was issued by a government body

All of the information below must be visible on the document:

  – First and last name

  – Date of birth

  – Date of issue and expiry

  – Document ID number

Note: The document needs to be fully visible. Partial documents cannot be accepted as a valid proof of identity.

 

Proof of Business Address: Verify your business address by providing a valid proof of address

PayPal accepts a copy of:

  – Utility bills (phone and broadband services, health insurance, gas, water, electricity, etc.)

  – Bank or credit card statements

  – Any other government-issued letters or statements in your name

You can take a photo of your document and upload it to your PayPal account. You can also send us a copy or a screenshot of your online bills/statements.

They do not accept:

  – Purchase receipts/invoices

  – Partial documents

  – Screenshots of your online banking or service pages

IMPORTANT NOTE:

    • The name and address on the documents must match those on your PayPal account.
    • The proof of address document must be dated within the last 6 months.
    • We cannot accept P.O. Box addresses as physical address verification.

 

Business Info: Verify your business entity by providing a proof of business documentation
What is a valid proof of business?

Please submit a copy of your Business Registrations (Business registrations, Memorandum/Article of Association, Certificate of Incorporation or equivalent).

This document(s) must collectively contain the following information:

      • Who owns or controls your business,
      • The business name, registration number, and
      • The latest validity period of the business.

These are the things that you need to present. When you register with the Bureau of Internal Revenue in the Philippines as a Freelancer, you will have a Certificate of Registration or a COR. You will be able to submit this as proof of business. Once you have a COR though, you will need to regularly pay your taxes for your freelancing business.

If you don’t have a PayPal account, you can sign up here: http://bit.ly/GA_O_PayPalSignUp

Here is a quick video on how to sign up for a PayPal account:

Get bigger and higher paying Local Clients!

The thing about getting international or foreign clients is that there is a lot of competition. I’ve seen though that the local landscape is in dire need for more suppliers.

Local companies are now open to hiring independent contractors. In order to land a job with huge corporations or even just so you can haggle your pay, you need to be able to issue an official receipt.

Official receipts are documents that support sales of service, and it is issued upon collection of payment from customers. The large companies use official receipts as supporting documents for accounting entries that they create, and they also use it as “expense” when they compute for their own taxes.

So as a freelancer, this is what I do. I go through a supplier accreditation process. This process requires me to submit all of my business documents.

Then when I win a project, I send an invoice so that I can bill for services. Most local clients accept paperless invoices, such as a PayPal invoice. You can prepare your invoice conveniently using PayPal then you can send it through email. You can also use it as a reminder to collect payment and even send recurring payments to continuous projects.

After payment has been given, this is the time when you send the BIR Official Receipt.

 

Be a Responsible Filipino Citizen

Paying taxes is our duty as Filipino Citizens. If we truly want to help our country grow and prosper, we need to pay your taxes as a freelancer. Every day, we are experiencing things that we paid for with our taxes (drive through highways, take public transportation, etc.). If we want to see more improvement, we need to do our part and contribute by paying your taxes.

Also, if we want a voice, we need to earn that voice. I don’t think we have the right to complain if we’re not at least paying our taxes 🙂

 

Avoid being Penalized

In my opinion, this is the last and the least of your worries. If you are regularly paying then you need not worry about this. But for your information, yes, you can be imprisoned for tax evasion and non-filing of appropriate forms.

Failing to file and pay your taxes come with hefty penalties and can range from imprisonment for 2 to four years. Summed up, it can reach as high as up to five times than your original tax due. So, it would be better to pay your dues and avoid being penalized.

Personally, my freelancing business grew, because I’m legit and I pay taxes. Business partners, brands, and other people that I work with and plan to work with respect and trust me more, because I have a legit business. Having business documents will open you up to more opportunities and tools that you can use.

It’s always good to start your freelancing career the “legit” way, so you need not backtrack and fix stuff.

 

Work well and do it right! Pay your taxes as a freelancer!

P.S. For more information, click here: https://mommyginger.com/freelancers-questions-taxation-answered.html