February 23rd, 2008
The first thing I did before collecting any money was set up a separate bank account. I got another Fast Saver, which is currently offering 7.75% interest per annum. This way I can earn a little interest on my tax before I have to pay it out at the end of the month.
At the end of last week I sent out my first invoice, and received my first bill payment. I used the online PAYE calculator at PAYE Calculator 2008 to calculate my income after tax. I then removed that amount from the business account, leaving the PAYE and GST in there for later payment. This means there is no chance of missing a tax payment, as I have kept the money aside.
I’ve also been printing out everything (invoices, tax calculations, bank statements showing income and payments) and putting it aside. This should make it easier for me to organise everything when it comes time to pay my taxes. I have asked an accountant (a very helpful family friend) for a bit of advice as to what I should be doing too, and he is doing a bit of research for me.
On the actual work front, everything has been going great so far. Gareth has been very helpful in getting me up to speed on the code base. I’m currently working on a formatter for TSQL code. I’ve written a bunch of new code, as well as refactored old code to make it easier to modify. I am also creating a unit test suite to make sure I don’t break anything. My next major task is to incorporate a whitespace insensitive text diff into our tests – this way I can run the code through the formatter and make sure it hasn’t removed anything important. Since there is a huge amount of TSQL code to work with, I can just run the formatter over it and throw the before and after code at the diff. If anything gets broken, the diff will pick it up.
No Comments | In: Contracting | | #
February 7th, 2008
Today I started doing some research on ANTLR (http://www.antlr.org/), a very powerful parser generator. It compiles language grammars into source code for a number of languages (I am working with C# output mostly, but it primarily creates Java). I am currently learning about Abstract Syntax Trees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_syntax_tree) and how I could use one of those instead of a Parse Tree (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parse_tree), which is what I have previously been working with when parsing languages. The major difference is I need to modify whatever language grammar I am using so that it produces an AST. I am hoping this isn’t too difficult, but we will see how things go over the next few days after I get up to speed on ANTLR. So far it looks promising though. I am impressed with how powerful ANTLR is – because it produces source code, you can embed code in the language specification itself. It looks like it is going to be a bit of fun figuring this all out :-)
No Comments | In: ANTLR, Contracting, Parsing | | #
February 7th, 2008
Today I registered for GST using the online form at the IRD website (https://www.ird.govt.nz/cgi-bin/form.cgi?form=ir360) after calling the IRD the other day and asking for a bit more information (they sent me some booklets). This was relatively painless, but necessitated by the fact that I am collecting GST from Slyce on my invoices. The good thing is you can apply to file every six months, which means I don’t have to worry about it for a while. They also say they might get in touch with you to give you a bit of advice on how to file a GST return. Which sounds pretty good to me.
Another thing I thought about today is ACC. It seems as a self employed person they calculate my ACC levies from my IR3 tax return at the end of the year. So I get stung with more bills around tax time. One thing I need to ring them and ask about is what happens if I stop being self employed half way through the year. Hopefully this should be just a case of ringing them and telling them when the time comes.
No Comments | In: Contracting, GST, IRD | | #