I do agency driving and get paid via an umbrella (or service) company. I’ve had a tax bill for £900 for benefits in kind. Anyone had any experience of this, before i get on to them and start shouting ?.
It could be for your car maybe. As self employed do you claim everything for your car?
I’ve only ever claimed mileage at the rate specified by the umbrella company.
This happened to a hell of a lot of drivers a few years ago but they had years worth of back payments to pay and it ran into thousands of pounds .If i was you i would go and see a accountant straight away.
Ex Haulier:
I do agency driving and get paid via an umbrella (or service) company. I’ve had a tax bill for £900 for benefits in kind. Anyone had any experience of this, before i get on to them and start shouting ?.
are you self employed?
if not, then you’re not liable for your employers ■■■■ up regarding your income tax.
Many times, the ■■■■-up that initiattes these tax bills are cause by sloppy accountants. Check that the accountants (usually forced on you by the umbrella company) havent listed something wrongly. Scrutinise them yourself! Mine cocked up and caused me a tax investigation, then the cheeky sod expected paying for the three visits to the tax office to clear it up that him and his Mrs caused. He didn’t get it, or paid for the previous work when he cost me not only three lost days but weeks trawling through stuff to spot where he had made the mistakes.
Ex Haulier:
I’ve only ever claimed mileage at the rate specified by the umbrella company.
Do you fill in your own tax form, do you use an accountant, or do you leave it all to the umbrella company? Whichever it is, I’d guess that HMRC have been informed that you claim for ‘business mileage’, but you haven’t completed the correct forms at your end to confirm this. First stop would be the umbrella company for not telling your the correct way to do things, especially if you were forced into using them.
Any expenses claimed without receipts are considered “benefits in kind”.
If HMRC have decided to disregard most or all of your mileage, and other car related expenses because you only produced receipts 25% of the time for example, would result in 75% of your mileage expenses in this example being “disallowed” by counting them as “benefits in kind”.
I imagine there are people leaving umbrella firms in droves right now, but alas it’s too late - HMRC are closing the jaws on the entire umbrella system, and it’s abuse of legitimate expenses. For most people, it will only involve the loss of this year’s tax rebate you might have got. For those doing dribs and drabs of umbrella agency work throughout the year, they’ll fare the worst because the umbrella firm has charged their commissions to the amount claimed back without receipts for the most part, thus looking transparent on the payslip (ie you don’t realise that you’re paying these guys £27+ a throw!), and taking it upon themselves to “refund” you money that HMRC have not authorised yet - and won’t, because receipts were not supplied in all cases.
£27xnumber of umbrella shifts worked 2011-2012=■■?
This is the worse case scenario, so a tax bill for £900 sounds about right for “dribs and drabs” shifts. 
Got business use on your car insurance? If not you can’t claim mileage.
Google IR35 - HMRC have decided you’re in breach of it and quite rightly so because you and virtually every other agency driver using umbrella companies are in breach.
What is going to happen in the near future is the same as happened to the IT industry several years ago when HMRC went on a witch hunt. IT consultants were playing the same game as agency drivers are now. There will be a lot of tax bills being sent out both to the worker and to the agency.
From posts on here and from talking to drivers I know on theses scams, sorry schemes, the amounts these umbrella companies are claiming for meals is way over what HMRC allow.They are booking 3 meals a day regardless of the hours the driver does or whether they meet the criteria , so it could be related to something like that.
People using umbrella companies should expect this sort of bill popping through the letter box with increasing frequency in the future.
I’ve got “no cover for business use except to and from your regular employment” on my insurance. This means I can’t go to B&Q to buy a chair for my office desk (if I had one!) but going to work doing the same thing I’ve done for the past 22 years is OK under PLG insurance. If it were not, then NO ONE would be able to claim expenses for driving to work. 
HMRC are chasing Self Employed/Ltd Co. and Umbrella people here, not PAYE staff, thus the PAYE affords some protection from an unexpected tax demand in itself.
A demand to an individual on PAYE would mean the agency lied to you about being on PAYE, and is likely to be pursued for re-imbursement by the worker. 
I reckon that instead of the government buggering around with rules that agencies & rip-off firms can circumvent, we’d all be better off if some law was passed with a new general working deal for all agency staff - one that keeps everything in house for example, and disallows mickey mouse expense claims via umbrella companies that let’s face it, are an unwanted middleman throughout the entire process. 
If it were a good deal, it wouldn’t be pushed on you at sign-up time now would it?
Good deals have to be asked for, and are not usually advertised to the general public like base rate tracker mortgages were before the credit crunch. All the sales spiel was for fixed/collar/capped/cashback etc. and other products which produce more commission for mortgage lender & estate agency staff. 
A lot of drivers have been caught out by these unbrella schemes ,complete con iwas on them for a while and yep the nice tax guys are looking into them and also into the LTD companys side of things as well ,the agencys dont give a flying [zb] about the drivers so if your on one of the above you should really look into what your getting yourself into.Talking to a lot of the guys at one of the places i work they have gone onto LTD companys now like myself but i get work from other companys as well(not through agency) they dont. I have tried to tell them they need to work in a few companys to do LTD co but according to the agency thats not true and i am getting the drivers worried about nothing.
garp:
A lot of drivers have been caught out by these unbrella schemes ,complete con iwas on them for a while and yep the nice tax guys are looking into them and also into the LTD companys side of things as well ,the agencys dont give a flying [zb] about the drivers so if your on one of the above you should really look into what your getting yourself into.Talking to a lot of the guys at one of the places i work they have gone onto LTD companys now like myself but i get work from other companys as well(not through agency) they dont. I have tried to tell them they need to work in a few companys to do LTD co but according to the agency thats not true and i am getting the drivers worried about nothing.
My son has recently had to go self-employed (in a different industry) but he is still only being paid from one source and works full-time for them. This is obviously against the rules of true self-employment so he rang the ‘newly self-employed’ helpline (08459154515, if anyone wants to see if they get a better answer) and explained his situation. They told him, and I confirmed it with a second call asking the same questions, that contracting in such a way is now being allowed by HMRC “because of the current economic climate”. Both advisors said that it had always been this way & would not be drawn on why what they were saying didn’t seem to tally with HMRC’s own rules. Needless to say they could not point us in the direction of where it was written in black & white. All sounds very dubious & I think they’re just allowing leeway for employers but there’s no guarantee they won’t change their tune once there’s a bit of improvement in the economy.
tallyman:
garp:
A lot of drivers have been caught out by these unbrella schemes ,complete con iwas on them for a while and yep the nice tax guys are looking into them and also into the LTD companys side of things as well ,the agencys dont give a flying [zb] about the drivers so if your on one of the above you should really look into what your getting yourself into.Talking to a lot of the guys at one of the places i work they have gone onto LTD companys now like myself but i get work from other companys as well(not through agency) they dont. I have tried to tell them they need to work in a few companys to do LTD co but according to the agency thats not true and i am getting the drivers worried about nothing.My son has recently had to go self-employed (in a different industry) but he is still only being paid from one source and works full-time for them. This is obviously against the rules of true self-employment so he rang the ‘newly self-employed’ helpline (08459154515, if anyone wants to see if they get a better answer) and explained his situation. They told him, and I confirmed it with a second call asking the same questions, that contracting in such a way is now being allowed by HMRC “because of the current economic climate”. Both advisors said that it had always been this way & would not be drawn one why what they were saying didn’t seem to tally with HMRC’s own rules. Needles to say they could not point us in the direction of where it was written in black & white. All sounds very dubious & I think they’re just allowing leeway for employers but there’s no guarantee they won’t change their tune once there’s a bit of improvement in the economy.
I have called the taxman twice as well and got 2 different answers ,one saying you cant work for the same company the other saying you can,it will be one to watch in the future for sure ,my accountant said that it will all blow up in a year or two but as i work for a number of companys it wont be a problem for me to worry about.
I retired out of the IT industry years ago and was very familiar with IR35, so when an agency asked me to go “umbrella” I refused as I couldn’t understand why that was different. I was of course told I was stupid and losing money but I was around when the Inland Revenue turned over the IT contractors and went back 6 years cleaning them out.
Forgive me but having been told for so long I didn’t know what I was talking about I will watch how this pans out with interest.