Today is my first day as a proper self-employed person, my Ltd co. is being set up as we speak.

Question is, do you have a separate laptop and mobile for work purposes?

My own mobile is an Xperia Ray which is fine for my own use but screen is tiny for picking up and writing emails when on the move (I’ll be travelling with my new contract)

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron -again fine for my own domestic use but not great for battery life or weight when carrying to client’s offices etc.

I’m also thinking it’s clearer for tax purposes if I keep my personal kit separate from work kit.

Any recommendations for a good mobile for work use (email when on the move being most important), laptop and also a good quality printer?

Every gadget we own “is for work purposes”

A lightweight laptop with a good battery is pretty essential for taking to site or to meetings. Other than the tax issues I can’t see much benefit in running two. As self employed you are pretty much always at work so it’s handy to always have your work machine to hand. Same goes for phone. One with a big screen for emails. Great for taking some time out, say for a bike ride, but still able to stay in touch.

Yes to both.
Contract business phone and pay-as-you-go phone for personal.
New laptop for work and older kit for home. Will have to upgrade the work one and push the current one to home use soon.

edit- the benefit in running a separate work computer is that your kids can’t knacker the work one 🙂 The payg phone is the cycling/crash/cheap phone. The work one has all the toys on it. 😉

That is the joy of self employment everything is for the business phones, computers, cars, clothes etc – hell even your bike will get through somehow.

No but I should…

Nexus 5 is working well as a phone for everything, nice big clear screen. The advantage of 2 is you can turn the work one off.
Laptop again should but got a 17″ inspiron, for what I do I wouldn’t want any smaller so I put up with the weight. A decent rucksack laptop bag is worth a lot though makes it all easier. I do have separate logins for work/when people are watching. A clean desktop, clean My Docs folder & downloads etc and a clean Chrome with none of your personal book marks etc. You can also set multi user chrome under one user.

Be careful though – as ltd, the company owns it – not you.
Self employed – its yours.
Doesnt sound like much of a difference but the Taxman is quite clear on it….

That is the joy of self employment everything is for the business phones, computers, cars, clothes etc – hell even your bike will get through somehow.

+1

Bike is easy, just buy it from gross earnings and you’ll even save corp tax 🙂

As above LTD is different to self employed. I’m the latter, but don’t have separate stuff for work and home. Isn’t there something about percentage of usage that you claim? Ie 90% of my calls are work related (I have no friends ha) so 90% of my phone bill is tax deductable? I have no real idea tbh……I pay an accountant to sort all of that stuff out.

brooess – good luck and enjoy the adventure.

I kept using my own phone, because that was the number people had. In theory I guess I could move the contract across to the company, but I can’t be bothered. A new laptop was needed though, so that is owned by the Ltd. Co. Like others have said, there’s some advantage to buying it out of gross (and more if you are VAT registered…)

I never did. No reason – UNLESS you are connecting it to your client’s networks. Then you have to be scrupulous about the work laptop because if you’re found to have introduced a virus or whatever, you’ll be in trouble. I don’t think there are any specific regulations about this but you would need your arse well covered, and there’s probably a lot of info about how to do this.

However your best option (and the one you’ll most likely be directed to do, or should be) is for the client to give you a laptop to connect to their networks.

As for phones – meh. I always had my own, and I still do even though I’m employed by a big company now 🙂

However your best option (and the one you’ll most likely be directed to do, or should be) is for the client to give you a laptop to connect to their networks.

Another potential IR35 pointer right there.

No reason – UNLESS you are connecting it to your client’s networks.

In the countries we work, you’re more likely to be infected doing this, I’ve found no end of viruses / Trojans on customer’s networks…..

I have the same laptop for home and work but 95% of the time it’s for work use – if I count spending time on here as work 😉
I was going to put my mobile through my LTD company but the small business contracts weren’t very good and would therefore end up cancelling out more than the tax savings.

Good luck with the new venture – I’m 7 months in to mine and it’s been great.

Don’t get carried away buying things you think you need or should have as a business. Try to just buy on actual need.

Be careful though – as ltd, the company owns it – not you.
Self employed – its yours.
Doesnt sound like much of a difference but the Taxman is quite clear on it….

Can’t see this having any practical consequences unless you go bust, hasn’t been an issue for us in six years.

I have my work desk set up with a 2nd screen and use the laptop and 2nd screen for most stuff. Once you get used to 2 screens it’s way better than a single screen of any sort, but with the ability to walk away with the laptop for work elsewhere.
I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad and their docking station was really cheap at the same time, so it’s only one cable to connect.

Can’t see this having any practical consequences unless you go bust

As I understand it the baliffs won’t come after your computers as it’s far too much work for such little gain.

Another potential IR35 pointer right there.

Hmm.. well I work as a consultant (for a big company) and the clients I work for always give us laptops, and I’m the very opposite of a permanent employee of the client.

I’d look into online backup, eg I sync my laptop to Dropbox and it backs up everything 24/7, so if the SSD / HD dies, I can still access everything from another machine etc and will minimise downtime.

Don’t back up anything client related on dropbox etc, as a general rule…

+1 for dropbox or similar. keeps a local copy and a cloud copy. Means I can access all my files from my phone when out and about. I don’t work for top secret industries so back up everything work related on there.

As I understand it the baliffs won’t come after your computers as it’s far too much work for such little gain.

I’d expect the same tbh, but that’s the only situation I could imagine where it’d actually become an issue.

Unless you were buying stuff on the company that wasn;t actually for work usage – and then got investigated by HMRC.

But we were talking about genuine work purchases.

Don’t back up anything client related on dropbox etc, as a general rule…

All depends who you work for, most of our customers also use it! Very handy for collaborative work with lots of large files as we just share a project related folder with the client for data exchange.

HMRC would have a hard time claiming a laptop wasn’t for work use. This work laptop gets used for personal use all the time (with permission from its owner), so the lines are pretty blurred.