With prices rising all the time and warnings that interest-rate increases are also coming our way, households are feeling the cost-of-living pressure. So who wouldn’t want a bit of extra income? Enter the side-hustle.
From starting a business on the side to selling your unwanted clothing or taking in students, more and more people are looking for a nixer.
Deirdre O’Keeffe, managing director of bookkeeping and tax advisory business Burdy, started it up as just such a side hustle some 20 years ago. Since then, she has noticed a “huge surge” in people coming to her for mentoring and guidance.
“People in the past wouldn’t have contemplated doing something off their own back – they would have been comfortable just being a worker,” she says. However, rising costs are forcing many to look for other ways to boost their income.
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She identifies three types of side-hustlers: the aspiring entrepreneur, who wants to start their business on the side and hope it grows from there; the supplementer, who is looking just to top up their income, not for a full-time career; and the opportunist, “who’s looking around the house thinking ‘What can I sell? Can I get money tax-free?’.”
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If you want to join the fray, what might you do? And what kind of tax will you have to pay?
Sell on Vinted
If you’ve a house full of clutter, use the long summer evenings not just to bring bags to the recycling centre, but also to make some money. Thanks to Vinted, buying and selling second-hand goods has never been so in vogue. There’s likely a market out there for your cast-offs.
To start with, you’ll need to take pictures of your items and upload them via the Vinted app. The process doesn’t take long, but taking decent photos might, and you need to pick the best price for a quick sale. Once your listings are live, you will hopefully get offers, which you have to decide whether or not to accept. For sellers, Vinted is free to use.
If you sell an item, you have five days to ship it, with the buyer covering shipping costs and Vinted’s fees. You can drop off your parcel either with An Post or at a shop that accepts DHL Express/drop2shop.
You’ve likely heard plenty of stories of the money to be made, but beware the effort involved; a colleague recently embarked on a Vinted declutter and sold 10 items, but only made €33 in total. That’s a lot of packing and printing labels for a relatively modest return.
Such an outcome can be dispiriting. As she says, you might put something up for €4, then someone offers you €2.50, and you’re so sick of it, you let the item go at the knock-down price.
If you have the necessary time, however, along with a decent wardrobe and a healthy social media following for targeted marketing, you could make a decent return.
According to O’Keeffe, making money this way “is 100 per cent tax-free” – unless of course you start doing it as a real trade.
Walk some dogs
Dogs are the new consumers these days, and there are plenty of dog-owners out there willing to spend good money to keep their mutts enjoying standards of living to which they have become accustomed.
As a casual earning opportunity, walking dogs can be a nice earner, particularly if you have some flexibility in your day job. Through sites such as Pawshake, you can advertise your services and earn about €10–€20 per dog per walk.
Keep a dog overnight and you could earn between €35 and €70, depending on where you live and what you can offer.
Bear in mind, however, that such income will be liable to tax if you already have an income.
Create content
It’s the nixer du jour: post content on social media and make money from brand deals, affiliate links, and more. It doesn’t take much to get started and, if you’re a success, the sky’s the limit. Jacksepticeye (Seán McLoughlin), for example, is said to earn about $20 million (€17 million) a year.
There are thousands of other would-be influencers, however, for whom posting content on a renovation or about family holidays is really just about bringing in a bit of an extra income. And enjoying lots of free stuff.
However, many content creators do not understand tax obligations on their income and, as O’Keeffe notes, they may also not understand the (tax) consequences of a “free holiday”.
Last year, Revenue published guidance indicating that all social media income-generating activity is taxable, be it carried out on a full-time or casual basis. Moreover, it stated that free holidays or other such benefits that involve promotion of a brand should be treated as taxable income.
Once you go over €5,000 a year, you’re leaving the world of the ‘sensible supplementer’ behind, says Deirdre O’Keeffe, and moving into different territory as someone who is self-employed
There is a “small loophole”, however, says O’Keeffe. If you are sent clothes or goods unsolicited, with no obligation to promote anything on your social media channels, “then that is not classed as taxable income”, she says.
Host a student
This is an odd option – but a good one. If you have spare space in your home, you could consider taking in one or two foreign students for a fixed period. The advantage of this is that you can commit to a squeeze on your house for a shorter period than you would if letting to a student over term time, or to a long-term tenant.
ISI Dublin, which offers a range of short- and long-term English classes, pays €220 a week from March to September for a junior student in a shared room, on a full-board basis. So you could earn €440 a week or €1,760 a month for hosting two students.
You can get the same rate for an adult student (ie €220 a week), but you’ll have to offer them a single room. You can also earn an allowance of €45 for collecting a student from the airport, or €60 if you live on the south side.
Similarly, MLC is currently looking for “farming and horse-riding” families all over the State to host international teenage students on farmstay and horse-riding placements. It says it pays rates of €250 to €620 a week.
Providing you qualify for rent-a-room relief and don’t earn in excess of €14,000 a year from taking in lodgers, you won’t pay tax on these earnings.
Mind children
Yes, there are increasing regulations you have to comply with, but if you can meet these, O’Keeffe notes that child-minding can be a “super way” to supplement your income.
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You can mind up to three children in your own home without paying any tax on your earnings, as long as it doesn’t exceed €15,000 a year, under Childcare Services Relief.
Give grinds/music lessons
With parents paying out significant sums every year for grinds and music lessons, if you have marketable skills in these areas, why not try to use them?
You can sign up on a portal such as superprof.ie, or promote yourself locally or on social media.
Based on current listings on superprof.ie, you can expect to earn between €20-€60 an hour for maths grinds, for example, or €30-€50 an hour for piano lessons.
What about tax?
If you are earning money doing something that has a tax liability arising from it, you’ll need to declare it.
“You have to declare all additional income, regardless if it falls into the taxable bracket,” says O’Keeffe.
How you do this will depend on your earnings.
According to O’Keeffe, if you earn up to €5,000, you can declare this through Revenue’s online MyAccount channel and you won’t have to file a far more onerous Form 11 (for self-employment). You can simply put in how much you’ve made and what your expenses were, and Revenue will come back to you with what you might owe.
What rate of tax you pay will depend on your overall earnings, such as PAYE income. Earnings of up to €44,000 across all income sources are subject to tax at 20 per cent for a single person, for example. You will also pay PRSI at 4.125 per cent on all extra earnings.
Once you go over €5,000 a year, you’re leaving the world of the “sensible supplementer” behind, says O’Keeffe, and moving into different territory as someone who is self-employed.
Under this bracket, you will need to register for self-assessment and file the longer Form 11, on which you might need to get tax advice, depending on your circumstances.
But if this puts you off, it shouldn’t. “It isn’t as frightening or as terrifying as people might think,” says O’Keeffe.
