I’ll try to be more specific.
In itself, I would have happily billed them 50€ and think I made a profit. The job I rejected required to make a change to a code base that I know extremely well, and that would have been done in less than 30 minutes, including testing.
If I were to accept free lance client in 2021, I would need to declare this income. I have literally no idea how much work it would be to declare it in the four countries I have to do a tax income declaration. However, it would essentially be a one time cost whatever the number of job I got in the year.
According to French law, an error in declaration could cost 5000€ if I recall correctly, and I really don’t believe I would not make an error if I did the tax myself. So I would need to hire an accountant. I didn’t thought about billing 5000€ or an accountant to the client. I’ll clearly also need an accountant in Germany, given that I don’t speak German. I’ve yet no idea whether the accountant would charge more if, with my salary, I also got some free lance job.
I would find strange anyway to charge all of those one-time-cost to the first client; however I would not expect to have more than 5 clients either, so the cost would still be pretty high. And at this point, the bill would mostly contain the accountant costs and not the cost of my work anymore.
So yeah, I could clearly ask for 10 000€ instead of the 50€ I first thought about. It would clearly have been an happy price, covered both the fees if I made a mistake and the accountant fees. And just I’d be happy to know I can help people that much that it’s worth this price for them. But I don’t believe asking this kind of price would have make sens here.
I’m sorry – I’m pretty familiar with all of that, and I was (implicitly) including all of the costs you mentioned, and your time and ‘cognitive ops’ too, when I asked:
Have you considered explicitly including those costs in your prices?
I admit it might be more pragmatic to just decline the work than explain that your price needs to cover having an accountant for each client’s country prepare your taxes.
But anyone willing to pay you money for something should be receptive to you refusing because of the costs of you doing business with them. So I think offering your cheerful price of 10.000€ (or €10,000), and a brief explanation of the accountant costs, would be pretty sensible actually.
I’ll try to be more specific. In itself, I would have happily billed them 50€ and think I made a profit. The job I rejected required to make a change to a code base that I know extremely well, and that would have been done in less than 30 minutes, including testing.
If I were to accept free lance client in 2021, I would need to declare this income. I have literally no idea how much work it would be to declare it in the four countries I have to do a tax income declaration. However, it would essentially be a one time cost whatever the number of job I got in the year.
According to French law, an error in declaration could cost 5000€ if I recall correctly, and I really don’t believe I would not make an error if I did the tax myself. So I would need to hire an accountant. I didn’t thought about billing 5000€ or an accountant to the client. I’ll clearly also need an accountant in Germany, given that I don’t speak German. I’ve yet no idea whether the accountant would charge more if, with my salary, I also got some free lance job.
I would find strange anyway to charge all of those one-time-cost to the first client; however I would not expect to have more than 5 clients either, so the cost would still be pretty high. And at this point, the bill would mostly contain the accountant costs and not the cost of my work anymore.
So yeah, I could clearly ask for 10 000€ instead of the 50€ I first thought about. It would clearly have been an happy price, covered both the fees if I made a mistake and the accountant fees. And just I’d be happy to know I can help people that much that it’s worth this price for them. But I don’t believe asking this kind of price would have make sens here.
I’m sorry – I’m pretty familiar with all of that, and I was (implicitly) including all of the costs you mentioned, and your time and ‘cognitive ops’ too, when I asked:
I admit it might be more pragmatic to just decline the work than explain that your price needs to cover having an accountant for each client’s country prepare your taxes.
But anyone willing to pay you money for something should be receptive to you refusing because of the costs of you doing business with them. So I think offering your cheerful price of 10.000€ (or €10,000), and a brief explanation of the accountant costs, would be pretty sensible actually.