Hi,
I’m trying to find a company that takes on LTD Companies. Im located in Norfolk UK but dont mind traveling for the right company.
Preferably tramping and continental work also.
Any help much appreciated.
They legally can’t, they can only take you on PAYE as an employee. You’ll have to go find your own clients and you’re going to be wanting more than one if you don’t want to attract the attention of HMRC.
I think agencies have been confusing people with what LTD means as in running a company, finding clients and billing them for specific work done, than being a fulltimer.
Ltd tramper for a company really makes little sense since that’s a fulltime employee by definition.
Also many companies are becoming wary of the whole LTD thing since they could be held liable for tax unpaid if HMRC did come knocking.
Humperdink:
Hi,I’m trying to find a company that takes on LTD Companies. Im located in Norfolk UK but dont mind traveling for the right company.
Preferably tramping and continental work also.
Any help much appreciated.
why would you want to do that?
This is one subject that boils my ■■■■ I earn good money but see a substantial amount go in tax and NI and then all these so called LTD companies who are are no more than tax dodgers keep popping up. Get a proper Job and pay your dues FFS
the old timer:
This is one subject that boils my ■■■■ I earn good money but see a substantial amount go in tax and NI and then all these so called LTD companies who are are no more than tax dodgers keep popping up. Get a proper Job and pay your dues FFS
Or…
Instead of ■■■■■■■■ about it, you could have worked out how to do it yourself and make better money through paying less tax. I did it for over a decade and my books were signed off by my local tax inspector every year.
I was doing a proper job, driving a lorry, just like you do… but making substantially more wedge than other drivers doing exactly the same job.
There is nothing ‘so called’ about a Ltd company if it’s registered with companies house.
One benefit to being a LTD driver is that you don’t have to pay 5% of your income for the 2019/20 tax year into a pension scheme like an employed driver does.
And as long as a LTD driver pays himself above the LEL Lower Earnings Limit through his LTD company’s payroll, he gets a qualifying year towards his basic state pension. The LEL for the 2018/19 tax year is £6032. However, most LTD driver’s will pay themselves £8424 through their LTD company’s payroll for the 2018/19 tax year, as that’s the most tax efficient way to do it. The rest of their income is paid in dividends.
LEL Lower Earnings Limit
gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-t … 18-to-2019
You can check your National Insurance record here:
carlston49:
One benefit to being a LTD driver is that you don’t have to pay 5% of your income for the 2019/20 tax year into a pension scheme like an employed driver does.
They also don’t get the 3% (I think?) that a company has to pay in, ie free money.
Either way I’m not sure not saving towards retirement is a benefit. It’s a pot of money that will be there when I retire while I’m not convinced that when I get to state pension age there’ll actually be a state pension any more.
Even Lorraine Kelly found it’s a good way of increasing your earnings 
toonsy:
carlston49:
One benefit to being a LTD driver is that you don’t have to pay 5% of your income for the 2019/20 tax year into a pension scheme like an employed driver does.They also don’t get the 3% (I think?) that a company has to pay in, ie free money.
Either way I’m not sure not saving towards retirement is a benefit. It’s a pot of money that will be there when I retire while I’m not convinced that when I get to state pension age there’ll actually be a state pension any more.
I doubt the pension will ever be scrapped as it would be political suicide. However I expect it’s relative value will decrease hugely.
The auto enrol is supposed to help bridge this gap by making sure people have additional savings to top this up. However I doubt most will save enough to make it worthwhile
I’m a full time LTD tramper, but I also have a wife who bills through the company for seasonal farm work.
99% of “LTD” drivers don’t actually understand what trading as a company is.
One man band, working for one client is a sole trader, or self employed, which is a big no no.
We also run payroll, and contribute to pensions - probably why HMRC are happy with how we operate.
Suggest you read up on LTD drivers, is a grey area, that’s slowly being closed in on by HMRC and their prosecution net…
toonsy:
carlston49:
One benefit to being a LTD driver is that you don’t have to pay 5% of your income for the 2019/20 tax year into a pension scheme like an employed driver does.They also don’t get the 3% (I think?) that a company has to pay in, ie free money.
Either way I’m not sure not saving towards retirement is a benefit. It’s a pot of money that will be there when I retire while I’m not convinced that when I get to state pension age there’ll actually be a state pension any more.
What makes you think your personal pension will be there either, or that the act of choosing to save more won’t mean more latitude to attack you later?
Most of the terms which made previous pensions savings attractive, like high savings returns (which ensured a cash pot grew), index-linking (which ensured a cash pot couldn’t be attacked by inflation), and final salary (which meant earlier contributions were uprated by subsequent payrises and stayed linked to general wage rates), have been abolished.
Most private pension providers also charge management fees as a percentage of the pot, which over time will seriously erode the value of tax relief and employer contributions.
Over 20 years, a 0.5% annual charge, for example, will wipe out around 10% of the value of the pot - and that’s 10% of your contribution as well as the employer’s.
Rjan:
toonsy:
carlston49:
One benefit to being a LTD driver is that you don’t have to pay 5% of your income for the 2019/20 tax year into a pension scheme like an employed driver does.They also don’t get the 3% (I think?) that a company has to pay in, ie free money.
Either way I’m not sure not saving towards retirement is a benefit. It’s a pot of money that will be there when I retire while I’m not convinced that when I get to state pension age there’ll actually be a state pension any more.
What makes you think your personal pension will be there either, or that the act of choosing to save more won’t mean more latitude to attack you later?
Most of the terms which made previous pensions savings attractive, like high savings returns (which ensured a cash pot grew), index-linking (which ensured a cash pot couldn’t be attacked by inflation), and final salary (which meant earlier contributions were uprated by subsequent payrises and stayed linked to general wage rates), have been abolished.
Most private pension providers also charge management fees as a percentage of the pot, which over time will seriously erode the value of tax relief and employer contributions.
Over 20 years, a 0.5% annual charge, for example, will wipe out around 10% of the value of the pot - and that’s 10% of your contribution as well as the employer’s.
But what options are there?
If we take the initiative and do something for our own future, it may not be a perfect fix, but doing nothing and saving nothing can be almost guaranteed to be worse.
Better to save what we can (and yes, with moving goalposts choosing the best way is a lottery) rather than do nowt and merely cross our fingers.
I`m sure some will recommend buying property, or investing in gold, or XYZ?, but nothing is sure in the future. Private pensions are, maybe, a better bet than most other options.
carlston49:
One benefit to being a LTD driver is that you don’t have to pay 5% of your income for the 2019/20 tax year into a pension scheme like an employed driver does.
One of the downsides of being a Ltd Driver is you’ll not pay 5% of your income into a pension scheme which only actually cost you 4% of take home thanks to it being taken pre-income tax, not get the 3% contribution from the employer and when you retire you’ll be £10,000s worse off than those who did.
£100 a month going into a pension growing at 5% a year will give you a pension pot worth £41k in 20 years.
toonsy:
They also don’t get the 3% (I think?) that a company has to pay in, ie free money.
Nor do they get the 12.07% holiday pay either. So now we’re already at 15.07% above PAYE rate just from those two plus there’s the 5% you save on income tax due to the workplace pension scheme, albeit you can’t touch that money until you’re 55 and draw down your pension. And you don’t have any administration or accountant costs of running a business either nor are you constantly looking over your back hoping the tax man doesn’t figure out you’re disguised employment and sending you a bill for everything you’ve claimed as an expense over the past several years. I believe the largest bill someone posted on here was over £15,000.
Franglais:
Rjan:
…But what options are there?
If we take the initiative and do something for our own future, it may not be a perfect fix, but doing nothing and saving nothing can be almost guaranteed to be worse.
People’s best bet for their future would be to take political action to protect or increase the state pension.
If you resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to be subject to political attacks and have your entitlements eroded, then you’ll almost certainly be attacked more grievously, regardless of what steps you take individually to mitigate it.
Better to save what we can (and yes, with moving goalposts choosing the best way is a lottery) rather than do nowt and merely cross our fingers.
I`m sure some will recommend buying property, or investing in gold, or XYZ?, but nothing is sure in the future. Private pensions are, maybe, a better bet than most other options.
It depends. A couple of tens of thousands on retirement may be handy, but it won’t really allow you meet the basic cost of living in retirement. An annuity from such a pot would probably pay only hundreds of pounds a year.
People generally need pots worth hundreds of thousands (in today’s money) to provide a proper retirement income.
In the past, people’s pension claims often weren’t expressed as individual cash pots, but as claims (either upon the company or upon the state) whose cash value would only be evaluated at the time of retirement and would be evaluated relative to wages or prices at the time of retirement.
It was also the employer or the state who had the responsibility of administering the scheme and paying the costs of administration, and it was the employer or the state who handled the risks.
If your cash pot has no protection against wage or price increases, no protection against poor investment performance, and is subject to management charges, then you’ll be extremely lucky (on extrapolation of past events in the marketplace) if the cash saved is worth as much in 30 or 50 years time as you are putting away today.
And if it does fall short, then it’s your problem as an individual whose working life is over, it’s not the problem of the employer (who can put up prices to make up any shortfall in the investments that back up defined benefit pensions) or the state (who can put up taxes and levy against any profitable area of the economy in order to meet its commitments to pensioners).
Rjan:
People’s best bet for their future would be to take political action to protect or increase the state pension.
I don`t need to point out to you that the State Pension is paid by those currently in work, for those who have retired. Without a very radical restructuring the current demographic trends would make any such action unlikely to succeed surely. Would the “pinched middle”, the 30 and 40 somethings struggling to buy a house, and raise a family, be content to finance the leisurely retirement of the growing tranche of retirees? Would those reaching “normal” retirement age be happy when told “not 1, not 2, but 10 extra years before you get any cash”?
A radical re-structuring of the whole system may work?
A guaranteed living wage for all, the end of 19th and 20th century capitalism, and embracement of a less materialistic, and non expansionist society may work… but that`s a whole lot more than I would term “political action”. More like changing the nature of who we are, greedy, competitive, selfish, short-sighted, humans maybe?
The rest of your post is a pretty good explanation of the situation… after retirement, apart from a promise we wont starve, were on our own. So I say again, anything we can do to secure our own future, imperfect as it is, must be better than doing nowt.
Franglais:
Rjan:
People’s best bet for their future would be to take political action to protect or increase the state pension.I don`t need to point out to you that the State Pension is paid by those currently in work, for those who have retired.
That is how any pension works.
Without a very radical restructuring the current demographic trends would make any such action unlikely to succeed surely. Would the “pinched middle”, the 30 and 40 somethings struggling to buy a house, and raise a family, be content to finance the leisurely retirement of the growing tranche of retirees?
The struggle to buy a house is, in many respects, caused precisely by financing the leisurely retirement of landlords who are far from retirement age!
If a majority of households are taxed £100 pw or more from their wages to sustain the unearned incomes of bankers, developers, and property speculators, then little wonder there isn’t much left to support those who have put in 40 years at the wheel or on the factory floor.
The answer is to put the idle rich back out to work for a normal rate, and reallocate the means which were previously consumed by supporting the rich, to supporting the pensions of working people.
Would those reaching “normal” retirement age be happy when told “not 1, not 2, but 10 extra years before you get any cash”?
A radical re-structuring of the whole system may work?
A guaranteed living wage for all, the end of 19th and 20th century capitalism, and embracement of a less materialistic, and non expansionist society may work… but that`s a whole lot more than I would term “political action”. More like changing the nature of who we are, greedy, competitive, selfish, short-sighted, humans maybe?The rest of your post is a pretty good explanation of the situation… after retirement, apart from a promise we won
t starve, were on our own. So I say again, anything we can do to secure our own future, imperfect as it is, must be better than doing nowt.
But I fear for the amount of misunderstanding that abounds - for example, you thought that the distinguishing feature of the state pension is that it’s paid for by current workers, when that is actually a feature of all pensions.
It isn’t possible to enjoy a retirement of material wealth, without somebody manning the means of production and ceding a share of what they produce to you.
Rjan:
But I fear for the amount of misunderstanding that abounds - for example, you thought that the distinguishing feature of the state pension is that it’s paid for by current workers, when that is actually a feature of all pensions.
Surely not?
A defined contribution plan, whereby a private individual builds a fund during their working life, and uses that fund to purchase an annuity, is not dependent on continuing contributions from other workers?
Franglais:
Rjan:
But I fear for the amount of misunderstanding that abounds - for example, you thought that the distinguishing feature of the state pension is that it’s paid for by current workers, when that is actually a feature of all pensions.Surely not?
A defined contribution plan, whereby a private individual builds a fund during their working life, and uses that fund to purchase an annuity, is not dependent on continuing contributions from other workers?
Yes, because when you save fiat currency (or anything denominated in fiat currency), it merely acts as a claim on future workers’ labour.
If you spent the money immediately, it would be a claim on the labour of your contemporaries.
Nobody in a civilised society and advanced economy operates in a fashion where they literally warehouse and save up the goods they need in retirement and avoid any reliance on human services. And even in a primitive society, the elderly do not in practice save up finished goods for their retirements, they establish relationships that allow them to make claims upon the labour of the next generation.
The key difference between defined contribution plan and final salary or state schemes, is that the employer’s contribution is limited to a fixed sum evaluated at the time of contribution, whereas the hallmark of a defined benefit plan is that the employer’s contribution is a variable sum evaluated at the time of retirement (and linked to general wages and prices that prevail at that time).
The hallmark of a DC scheme then is that the worker takes the risk as an isolated individual, whereas with a DB plan the employer takes the risk, and with the SRP the state takes the risk.
And the whole reason those risks are being transferred is because they are becoming expensive to insure against in an uncontrolled free market, and because on current calculations, cash retirement savings are expected to drop in value by time of retirement (if they weren’t expected to drop in value, then companies would continue to offer DB schemes, which would provide security with no additional cost).