I have translated various documents for a few people who were self employed in Ireland. It is all about filing the correct paperwork and having paperwork to support all claims and being HONEST.
Eg EU citizen comes to Ireland - they need their identity documents (passport and also preferably birth cert) and also their insurance number from their own country (NI from UK, PESEL from Poland and so on). Then they get Irish PPS number.
Step 1. Get Irish pps number using passport and insurance number from own country, for EU citizen, passport for non EU spouse and all children. Do this in first three months.
Step 2. Contact Revenue and register as self employed - this basically just means complete a form with simple questions such as date of birth. Then you get the first critical piece of paperwork - a letter saying you are registered as self employed. (If you have children living with you then you send a copy of this to child benefit section to claim 130 euro per month per child, with completed application form for child benefit).
Step 2a Get long term stamp EU FAM for non EU spouse using the letter from Revenue.
Step 3. Keep records of work done, income earned costs incurred and profit. This obviously depends on what you do, but say you sell art - you will have cost of paint/canvas, income from sale of painting, then profit. So good records, preferably deposit income into bank acccount when you get it, as proof you were paid, then take out a set amount each week (drawing income for yourself each week). Be HONEST -if you lie it is trouble. Better to say honestly you earned 50 euro this week cutting lawns for neighbours and have proof of this than to lie and have no proof.
Step 4. Can be done any time after 1 January - in other words start work in say September 2013, this step can't be done until January 2014. It is to calcuate and pay the tax due to the Irish taxman. Then six weeks later he sends a form to say tax/prsi paid in Ireland. Then you have proof you were self employed from Sept to Dec 2013 and that taxman accepted this and took the tax on your income. This is the final piece of paperwork and you need to do this each year you are self employed.
That is it - basically very easy if you are good at paperwork.
One point is that I think in Ireland you need to declare drawings/income of five thousand per year for a single person. Otherwise I think income too low and causes problems. If your spouse is with you and is not working elsewhere then I would double this to showing an income of five thousand for EACH spouse, and would declare both husband and wife as both being self employed, following the above steps for each spouse. Reason first is that they need to show they earn enough to live, and one hundred euro per spouse per week is bare minimum needed for survival here in Ireland. Second reason is long term that both spouses begin to gain rights to old age pension when old.
Note also that I would recommend that if work as an employee is available it should be taken as the prsi paid as an employee has better rights associated with it.
Note also that self employed EU citizens who do not earn sufficient to support family may apply for social welfare assistance - this is usually a long and interesting process requiring an extensive knowledge of rights under EU law.
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