5 live are doing a program on Sunday 21st Oct at 2100 looking into the practises of these companies . Got to be worth a listen if you are on one of these scams sorry mean schemes .
Tax avoidance is only wrong when he’s a multi £millionaire & he qualifies for a sacrificial article in ‘The Sun’ noozpaper.
Us knuckledraggerz simply cannot comprehend the irony of a few million peeps avoiding paying a pittance when there are literally 100’s of £gazillionaire’s getting away with probably the same amount !
garp:
5 live are doing a program on Sunday 21st Oct at 2100 looking into the practises of these companies . Got to be worth a listen if you are on one of these scams sorry mean schemes .
Scams was the right word 
I imagine there would be some agency people now wondering what will happen if they cannot bullcrap people into believing they’re better off being paid through an umbrella company.
If you pay £27 per payslip, then if you get paid £50 an hour and book loads of hours per week like a lawyer, BBC self-employed, or of course an accountant, then umbrella is the best thing since sliced bread for avoiding tax.
If you pay £27 and get a 8 hour shift @ £8.50ph on the other hand, then quite frankly they are quite happy to rip off people who don’t know how to work the system and make it count for them. You need BIG earnings to make umbrella pay - at least £18ph I’d say, and a full time number of hours per week booked. The more gross pay, the less the “commission” represents as a percentage loss to it. 
On the single 8 hour £8.50ph shift payslip (agency not giving you enough work for instance) the headline wage of £68 is dropped to £41 by the deduction, but will then be boosted up by them claiming your tax rebate in advance on a week-by-week basis. The payslip might show a takehome pay of perhaps £65, so the victim thinks the umbrella firm are doing a good job reducing their deductions to a mere £3 on a cursory glance at it. Trouble is, if your earnings suddenly spike towards the end of the tax year, you’ll have to pay HMRC back for tax rebates claimed effectively in advance. Once this is established, all the victim can do is walk away, and put the losses down to experience. Effectively, the victim paid the £27 per payslip for asbulutely NOTHING. All tax deducted to beef up the headline payslip figure had to be paid back, so nothing was really gained - just dressed up to LOOK like you did.
The only chance of someone going to jail is the VICTIM if they don’t repay any taxes demand by HMRC. If the Umbrella company falls under inestigation, it’ll just melt away, and re-form somewhere else. The wheels chasing them are too slow to catch out the users of our soft company legislation that allows thieves wearing suits to operate such businesses openly, knowing they won’t be shut down before they’ve made a few quid out of a few bods that can’t do math. 
As for such firms continuing, an analogy:
If someone in a suit is offering turds for sale @ £10, and they sell out, then they are going to be feeding everyone they know laxatives so they can expand the business are they not? 
If someone goes for the con, the con continues. If con artists don’t get put in jail, they’ll come up with innovative new ways to con, knowing they will not be punished for it. 
Like ‘War Games’, the only way to win is not to play.
What you don’t lose, you win.
The £27 in your pocket you didn’t cough up, is the same as £27 paid to you in wages, in that it’ll buy the same amount of goods and services.
We’ll get robbed as much as we want and allow ourselves to be. Does that make me a tightwad? - Hell, YES! Money for me working is a one way street! 
Chas:
Tax avoidance is only wrong when he’s a multi £millionaire & he qualifies for a sacrificial article in ‘The Sun’ noozpaper.Us knuckledraggerz simply cannot comprehend the irony of a few million peeps avoiding paying a pittance when there are literally 100’s of £gazillionaire’s getting away with probably the same amount !
Nobody is complaining about the tax avoidance part of it, rather than you sign your rights away as an employee for an extra £1/hr over PAYE which doesn’t even come close to covering the cost.
Is it not outlandish claims by some of these companies thats getting investigated, its not Umbrella Companies that set the £1 an hour extra rate, its agencies.
Some are advertising £95 a day meal allowances without receipts.
Think some are working out the Tax and then taking allowances from that instead of taking the allowances from the total and then taxing, not sure about that though.
I think its Professionals, like GPs, Engineers and Construction workers that are heavily into these schemes, Drivers would be minimal compared to these professions.
Is it better, and cheaper, to have an accountant and go the sole trader route?
I went down the ltd company route , much better for me as it lets me work for a couple of local companies direct as well of working for a agency when I really have too . Got a accountant and she does all my paper work for me .
Gall63:
Is it better, and cheaper, to have an accountant and go the sole trader route?
it’s cheaper to do it yourself.
10 minute job once a year.
limeyphil:
Gall63:
Is it better, and cheaper, to have an accountant and go the sole trader route?it’s cheaper to do it yourself.
10 minute job once a year.
Agreed. Thats what my posts up to now have been banging on about. Dont even need an accountant. Just a computer and HMRC phone number.
coreysboys:
limeyphil:
Gall63:
Is it better, and cheaper, to have an accountant and go the sole trader route?it’s cheaper to do it yourself.
10 minute job once a year.Agreed. Thats what my posts up to now have been banging on about. Dont even need an accountant. Just a computer and HMRC phone number.
I do mine myself but just been knocked back for a remortgage because I have not been doing it 2 years but they said if I do the books myself they won’t entertain me.
Sorry for the hijack of the thread but do you two know anyway round that.
Another interesting thing, as I was chatting last week with a guy (who bringing me back to the yard from another yard) he’s been signed up with a certain payroll Co. they have him registered on the small business vat scheme. However for some reason he sees no monitory benefit from being on this. Because when I tried to explain the rudimentary principle of how it works he stated “yeah but it’s not real money, its a bit like its mythical, as I get nothing out of it”
He actually was astonished when I showed him 1 of my invoices that had the vat figures included.
Then the penny dropped when he realised he could be loosing a “little bit extra”