BUSINESS
A Bit on the Side cont...
Hustle, what hustle? The definition is refreshingly loose. A side hustle is anything you do for money alongside your main job, stretching from the occasional Saturday market stall right through to proper freelance consultancy invoiced through a limited company. Where it turns murky is the line between having a good clear-out and unwittingly running a business, a distinction in which HMRC has become extremely interested. Selling your own wardrobe on Vinted isn’ t trading, no matter how many parcels you’ re lugging to the Post Office, but buying a job lot of denim at a car boot sale on Sunday to list at a markup on Monday absolutely is- from the outside, the two look identical.
The maths doesn’ t quite add up Here’ s where it gets interesting. Depending on which survey you read, somewhere between four and five in 10 of us are running something on the side, and yet the Office for National Statistics( which counts these things for a living) puts the number of people holding a second job at around 1.3 million, or 3.8 % of everyone in work, with that figure falling rather than climbing.
Both are true, which is the genuinely fascinating bit. The ONS counts formal second jobs, dutifully declared to a government survey, whereas the side hustle economy is casual, cash-forward and largely undocumented, so it barely registers officially at all. Roughly one worker in 26 has a second job on paper, while something approaching half of us have one in real life. Research tracking this booming trend for four years found four in 10 adults have thought about starting something on the side in 2026, with more than half of those planning to keep hold of the day job while they test the water.
Earnings are where the reporting falls apart entirely, with online average figures veering wildly between £ 500 and £ 914 a month. The more honest picture is that while one in five side hustlers clears more than £ 1,000 a month, nearly 75 % are making up to £ 500 and most are putting in 10 hours a week or less. We are not a nation of moonlighting entrepreneurs poised to hand in our notice, therefore; instead, we’ re a nation topping up the food shop.
So, why are we all at it? Money, mostly, and there’ s no point dressing it up. Around seven in 10 millennials and well over half of Gen Z are either working a second job or seriously considering one, with financial pressure the number one driver, and the picture is much the same further up the age range, where the majority of Gen X say exactly the same thing. In Kent, where the average monthly private rent runs from around £ 900 in Dover to north of £ 1,700 in Sevenoaks, combined with national energy and food price hikes showing no signs of slowing down, the sums aren’ t difficult to do.
There’ s a happier story running alongside it, though. While it’ s no surprise that extra cash is the main motivator for most people, side hustles also give people a greater sense of purpose and a fair few have started one simply to do something that they love; a passion project that pays some bills, perhaps. That’ s the version we all like to picture- the pottery, the sourdough, the vintage furniture restored in the garage over a long winter- and for plenty of people it’ s entirely real. The less charming footnote is that nearly half of those surveyed admitted that money worries were affecting their concentration at their actual job, which suggests that for a good number, the second gig is less of a passion project and more of a symptom.
What’ s booming and what’ s bust Resale has run away with it- Vinted now has more than 17 million UK users, putting it within touching distance of Primark and Next for sheer customer reach, and the secondhand fashion market in the UK is worth upwards of £ 7 billion, with roughly one in four fashion purchases now preloved. Selling clothes you no longer wear has gone from mildly embarrassing to entirely ordinary in about five years flat.
Elsewhere, the news is bleaker. If your plan was to knock out a bit of freelance copywriting or logo design of an evening, be warned that artificial intelligence has taken an enormous bite out of the bottom of that market. A major international study tracking millions of freelance job adverts found that within eight months of ChatGPT arriving, demand for freelance writing had dropped by around 30 %, with design and software work not far behind. The crucial caveat is that overall freelance demand didn’ t collapse, it simply moved. Anything a machine can make a decent stab at has evaporated, while genuinely specialist, technical and strategic work is holding up perfectly well, so expertise is now the thing worth selling.
The bit nobody posts about And so to the paperwork, where the fun traditionally stops. The £ 1,000 trading allowance is the one to know about, and the sting is that it applies to your gross income rather than your profit, so around £ 85 of sales a month tips you over it regardless of what the stock cost you in the first place. Since 2024, platforms including eBay, Vinted, Etsy and Airbnb have been legally obliged to hand your details to HMRC once you pass roughly 30 sales or £ 1,700, and figures obtained under freedom of information show that HMRC received reports on nearly four million online sellers in a single year, all of it merrily crossmatched against tax returns, so the days of nobody noticing are firmly behind us.
You may have seen headlines about the reporting threshold rising to £ 3,000- and that is coming, but read the small print before you celebrate because it isn’ t a tax cut. The tax-free allowance stays exactly where it is at £ 1,000; all that changes is the point at which you have to fill in a full tax return, and tax can still be owed on everything in between.
What you actually keep depends enormously on which hustle you’ ve picked. Modelling by online accountancy firm eAccounts found that a higher-rate taxpayer renting out a spare room under the Rent a Room Scheme would hold onto around £ 9,000 of a £ 10,000 side income, while the same sum earned flipping furniture on Facebook Marketplace left barely a third of it once stock, transport and storage had taken their cut. Two people, identical income, wildly different outcomes. It’ s also worth an unromantic look at your employment contract, because a good many now include a clause requiring you to declare outside work.
So by all means have a bit on the side, just go in with your eyes open. Sort the paperwork early, pick the hustle that suits your life rather than the one trending online and there’ s every chance the thing you started to cover the car insurance could become the thing you’ d rather be doing full time. Plenty of very good businesses began exactly that way, just make sure you tell the taxman about it.
Know Your Numbers
£ 1,000 is what you can earn before HMRC wants to hear from you, and that’ s £ 1,000 of sales, not profit. 30 sales or £ 1,700 is the point at which Vinted, eBay, Etsy and Airbnb hand your details over automatically. £ 3,000 is where that reporting threshold is heading laterthis decade, though the tax-free £ 1,000 isn’ t going anywhere. For more information about tax and self assessment visit: gov. uk / browse / tax / self-assessment. You can also seek financial advice from a regulated accountant.
198 • www. insidekent. co. uk