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”.
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.
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…
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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/.
