KilnGuides
Free, plain-English guides for self-employed workers.
Tax, insurance, pricing, rights, safety, explained properly.
No jargon. No paywall. No login. Ever.
A growing network of independent guidance sites, one for every trade. Built in the UK, now live in Australia, Canada, the US and India, with South Africa on the way.
How this works
Always free
Every guide, template and tool. No paywall, no login, no premium tier. Ever.
Plain English
Written by people who have been there. No legal jargon, no HR waffle, no gov.uk copy-paste.
Kept up to date
Tax rates change. Laws change. We update everything so you do not have to.
Honestly funded
Revenue comes from clearly labelled industry sponsorship. Sponsors never influence a word of editorial, and we never sponsor mental health content.
What every Kiln covers
Tax and Self-Assessment: how to register, what you owe, when to file, and how to claim what's yours.
Insurance: what cover you actually need, what's legally required, and what's a waste of money.
Pricing Your Services: how to charge properly, what others charge, and when to raise your prices.
Employment Rights: your rights as a self-employed worker, including IR35, CIS, and contracts.
Health and Safety: what's legally required for your trade, from risk assessments to PPE and COSHH.
Regulations and Licensing: which licences, registrations and qualifications apply to your industry.
Client Management: contracts, deposits, cancellations, complaints, and getting paid on time.
Business Growth: marketing, hiring, scaling up, and knowing when you're ready.
We build a dedicated site for each trade:
- Construction, for builders, plumbers, electricians, tradespeople and contractors
- Property and lettings, for landlords, property investors and short-let hosts
- Hair and beauty, for hairdressers, barbers, nail techs and beauty professionals
- Couriers and platform work, for gig-economy riders, drivers and platform workers
- Tax (by country), plain-English guidance for the UK, US, Canada and India
- Online-course due diligence, checking out courses and training before you pay
- Tattoo and body-art, for the tattoo and body-art trade (coming soon)
What a Kiln guide is
Every Kiln site is built around long-form, plain-English guides that cover the stuff nobody else explains properly. Not blog posts. Not listicles. Not AI-generated filler. Each guide walks you through a real topic from start to finish: what the rules are, what actually happens in practice, and what to do about it. Here are three examples.
How the Construction Industry Scheme affects your tax return
CIS deductions, gross payment status, and what HMRC actually expects from you
If you work in construction as a subcontractor, the contractor paying you is supposed to take 20% (or 30% if you're not registered) off every invoice and hand it straight to HMRC under the Construction Industry Scheme. That money is not lost. It is sitting against your tax bill, but only if your self-assessment is set up properly and your deduction statements match what HMRC has on file.
This guide covers how to register as a subcontractor, what the difference between net and gross payment status actually means for your cash flow, why your CIS deductions sometimes do not show up on your account, and how to reclaim what you are owed without waiting months. It also covers what to do when a contractor pays you without deducting at all, and when you should be the one doing the deducting.
Most tradespeople overpay tax for years before they sort this out. You do not have to be one of them.
Section 21, deposits and Right to Rent: the notices landlords must get right
The paperwork that decides whether you can actually get your property back
If you want to end an assured shorthold tenancy without giving a reason, you serve a Section 21 notice. But Section 21 only works if you got the start of the tenancy right. Deposit in a government-approved scheme within 30 days. Prescribed information served. Gas safety certificate, EPC and the How to Rent guide all handed over before the tenant moved in. Right to Rent checks done on every adult in the household. Miss any of these and the courts will throw your notice out.
This guide walks through the exact documents you need, when each one has to be served, what counts as proper service, and the recent case law that has caught landlords out. It covers what to do if you realise you missed a step (some are fixable, some are not), how the Renters Rights changes affect Section 21, and the alternative routes when Section 21 is not available.
Getting this wrong does not just delay your possession. It can cost you up to three times the deposit in penalties.
Self-assessment for the newly self-employed: what you owe and when
The first year is the one that catches everyone out. Here is how it actually works.
When you go self-employed, you owe income tax and Class 4 National Insurance on your profit, not your turnover. You need to register with HMRC by 5 October following the tax year you started. You file your first return by 31 January. And then, on that same January deadline, you often have to pay one and a half years of tax in a single hit, because of something called payments on account that nobody bothers to warn you about.
This guide covers how the tax year works, which expenses you can actually claim (and which ones HMRC will quietly reject), the difference between the cash basis and traditional accounting, when you have to register for VAT, and how to budget for your bill so January does not wipe you out. It also covers what changes once you hit the threshold for payments on account, and how to reduce them if your second year is going to be quieter than your first.
The system is not designed to be friendly. Once you understand it, it is not complicated either.
The Charter
Our promise
Every guide free, forever. No paywall, no login. Sponsors never touch editorial. We never sponsor mental health content.
Read the full CharterSponsor a Kiln
Category-exclusive sponsorship across our network. One sponsor per topic, per site. Your brand sits alongside the guides your customers already read, with no influence over editorial, ever. Brands sponsoring two or more Kilns are featured as Network Partners on this hub.
- •Category-exclusive: one sponsor per topic, per site
- •Your brand alongside the guides your customers already read
- •No influence over editorial, ever
- •Network Partner status for brands across 2+ Kilns
We never sponsor mental health content.
Our Partners
Trusted by these businesses across the Kiln network
The Online Accountant
Accounting and tax support across the network
Visit
The Property Accountant
Specialist property tax guidance
VisitInterested in becoming a Kiln Network Partner? Get in touch
Why I built this
I spent months dealing with a business dispute and realised something that should have been obvious: the information I needed existed, but it was buried across gov.uk, law firm blogs written for lawyers, and trade body sites locked behind paywalls. If I found it hard to navigate with years of business experience, someone just starting out has no chance.
KilnGuides started as one site for construction workers. Then I realised every self-employed industry has the same problem: the rules are the same, the jargon is the same, and nobody explains any of it in plain English. So I kept building.
Every guide is free. Every template is free. Every tool is free. No paywall, no login, no premium tier. Revenue comes from industry sponsorship, clearly labelled, and never on mental health content. That is it.
Scott Jones
Founder
"If I found it hard to navigate with years of business experience, someone just starting out has no chance."