Contracting can be a tricky old business at times, few problems more pronounced than the feast or famine cycle.

It’s something near enough everyone knows now, having an online presence is incredibly important in finding and securing new work. Whether it’s hunting it down yourself or bringing people to you, the internet has increased access to employers.

Last week the Prime Minister David Cameron announced he was appointing twelve Conservative MPs as “Small Business Ambassadors”, who would be charged with “helping promote and represent small businesses across the country and government.”

With users in the hundreds of millions, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn carry an abundance of opportunities for the contractor. Swathes of businesses are taking to the platforms and as such, offering up job opportunities to their followers, likers and connections…

Cloud accounting is obviously sticking around. It’s proven itself to be more than a fad or a gimmick as more and more people have made the switch.

The whole world is moving towards realtime data – the whole world except, of course, the banks. These financial behemoths still rely on infrastructure and software designed in the 1960s and 1970s, which will fall down spectacularly with just the slightest of prods.

We have more categories of tax in the UK than we have world cups in football, so at least two. Is there an argument for having just a single tax rate that everyone pays?

Cultivating good cash flow is crucial as a contractor. Lack a keen eye on your finances and you could be back in-house sharpish, and you don’t want that, what with Britain’s bosses getting nastier.

There’s always so much to do, but just never enough time. Here’s a few apps to help you grab some time back so you can fit more into your day.

There is one absolute surety about the future of taxation in the UK and the developed world – it will only ever go up.

Value added tax is 40 years old this year and it deserves a birthday celebration. VAT wasn’t born as such, he was simply a rebranded form of something called purchase tax that we had in the UK previously.

It’s often not what you know, but who you know – as reflected by the respective careers of the Geldof children – and the world of contracting is little different, a burgeoning contact book a useful asset to have with growing numbers turning to self-employment.

As a contractor it’s likely you’ll be moving about to different places of work much more often than your average worker. It’s all part of the job in the end, but it can have a big impact on your relationships.

Twenty twelve was an eventful year on the world stage for more reasons that any of us can remember, but in startup land it may well be remembered as the year the financial sector was finally taken to task.