The new year has started and is actually already in its second week, but since I was on a well-earned vacation until Monday and then had to attend a meeting of the commission for the new syllabus for the Fachakademien f\u00fcr \u00dcbersetzen und Dolmetschen, I really only started getting back into the swing of things yesterday.<\/p>\n
I know that for some colleagues, there is no such things as a Christmas break, but for me it really was, and things are slow to pick back up. That is not necessarily a bad thing, though! I’d rather have a nice slow warm-up instead of jumping right into the thick of things again (although I can do that, too, I just prefer not to).<\/p>\n
I started my work year with what most would call a necessary evil for every freelancer in Germany, the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung<\/em> or advance value-added tax return. I have to do this every quarter, but I actually don’t mind it at all.<\/p>\n On the one hand, it gives me an overview over how much and what kind of work I did the previous three months as well as how much money I spent and on what.<\/p>\n And on the other hand, it forces me to clean up my desk, in this case my multi-pocket file folder. Every piece of paper that comes across my desk gets pre-sorted into this folder, making the (final) filing a breeze. And since this takes place every quarter, there is no risk of it overflowing.<\/p>\n Having to do the advance return regularly also prevents me from forgetting or losing important paperwork like invoices, receipts and so on.<\/p>\n And the most important part, at least from a financial point of view, is of course that I won’t have this huge sum in value-added tax to pay back for an entire year come tax time.<\/p>\n Yes, it may be easier to just collect everything and give it to your accountant, and I do have one who does the annual tax return for me, but I like having this opportunity to see how my business is doing, and it really isn’t that much work.<\/p>\n\n\n