Set myself up as a Ltd company or something?

a lot of people contact through umbrella companies rather than setup their own ltd’s.

talk to an accountant.

The easy option is to use a company to handle your affairs for you. This is particularly good if you’re not sure how long it’ll last etc. If it’s a long term plan then get an accountant and your own company and you’ll make more money.

I used boss solutions, some friends use Brookson.

try a search i had a similar question about 6 weeks ago

i decided ltd is only way forward and used these guys, so far so good

Home

they have a referral fee if you are interested.

Cheers

You can operate as a sole trader, but a lot of companies prefer a Ltd company.

Get some business first!

Option A – Ltd Co, (local accountant – I Lindsey, co Arthur daniels, Fareham), Employer + Employee Liability + IR35 insurance Caunce O’hara or something like that), vat registered over 64k(???)

Option B – Umbrella – e.g. parasolit, less tax efficient, less hassle, do research, beware unreceipted expenses claims.

Option C – MSC – composite set up, Do NOT do this.

Tip – the only public sector organisation I’ve ever seen display effiency is the vat man do not ***k with them. (They also appeared to be pretty realistic and fair)

I’ve used these lot: http://www.ibalance.co.uk/ for years, and they have been spot on IMHO.

Well, you post a hell of a lot on STW, apparently you’re seriously accident prone when coming into contact with everyday objects, so I’d say you’re almost there 😆

That’s right Deadly and I am happy to rent out my soul to the highest bidder!

I’m a LTD as a PM and it’s easy to set up a company, I’d avoid an umbrella company and just get an accountant to do your books for year end. The rest is pretty straight forward.

Get work, get invoices paid (on time), pay self, save money for corp tax etc etc. The hardest bit was not the first contract but getting the 2nd/3rd contract as you haven’t proven yourself yet.

Nick,

Joxster has it about right. Having been a contract for near on 10 years now it’s very simple.

You’ll require a LTD company and the only decision after that is whether you’re going to attempt to dodge ‘IR35’ – the legislation used to max high earning self employed contractors pay more tax.

The answer to whether to dodge IR35 is purely up to you but what I can say if you get a good accountant not a shrinked-wrapped package from some faceless accountancy firm they will probably be able to advise you better than anyone else, my accountant offers both services – one to dodge IR35 and one to not, obviously the one attempting to dodge costs a lot more.

As for umbrella companies forget it a compelte waste of time and money, you might think your saving money but they are useless when you step outside of their comfort zone…

Also insurance against IR35 IMO is waste of money as well – i can’t be bothered getting my contract checked everyone month, 3 months etc. If the government wants to get you for missing tax they will.

Ollie

So if the interview goes to plan on Friday I need to set up WCA Ltd

I might need to think of something more appropriate than World Class Accident for the company name though.

WCA, how about Totally Web Accessible Technologies LTD

I saw something the other day about the government cracking down – or ‘keeping a close eye on’ – umbrella companies in order to stop people scamming it.

I used an umbrella company and a few expenses went through which wouldn’t put me out of place in the labour party right now. But the likes of Tarpon say they have sign off from the inland revenue never to be searched but also to take all responsibility if irregularities were ever found in my expenses (I didn’t go with them, that was their sales pitch…). Okaaaaaaayyyyy (backs away slowly).

tiptoes in…..

IR35!

tiptoes out…

I don’t mind paying my taxes so IR35 isn’t such an issue.

We Create Advantage LTD perhaps…

What do I need to do to become an IT contractor?

Specialist skill and a mercenary nature helps.
And right now, not to care about job security – that’s if you have a job to care about.

I don’t mind paying my taxes so IR35 isn’t such an issue.

lol. I think you need to read up a little on ir35.
You’ll end up paying more tax than your PAYE employee.

If you use umbrella compainies such as Giant you needn’t worry about IR35 as you are their employee as far as the tax man goes. I only recommend this route if you are not earning too much (ie < 50-60k) your expenses are fairly straight forward (petrol & lunch)and you think you will likely be doing work that the taxman would definately consider to fall within IR35.

If you are doing lots of different contracts on specific areas where you are definately your on boss then def set up an LTD and get a good accountant.

When I was contracting I had to use an umbrella as even a good accountant could not protect me from IR35 if the taxman had come looking. I was effectively someone elses employee working at a managers descretion on whatever workload came up day to day.

On the statistics side however you would have to be very unlucky to get caught. HMRC have only bought a couple of successful prosecutions for IR35 dodging in the past year. These however laid out quite clearly what they considered to fall inside/outside of IR35.

I will check out IR35, I would be doing knowledge management for 4 or 5 different companies on a consultancy basis.

You’ll never look back once you join the ‘Contractor Scum’ club 🙂

It’s a great club, no company politics to worry about etc etc. Th only PITA is when you want a holiday you need to add the cost of the days you don’t work. We take most of our holidays over Christmas and Easter when we’ve got no choice of being in work. It’s worth getting illness cover in case you break something and can’t work, loosing £10-15k a week makes it twice as painful.

About 2 or 3 budgets ago, legislation was brought in that meant umbrella companies would be hit by IR35. I know the people working with me through Brookson at this time all changed from an umbrella company to a limited company of their own.

And right now, not to care about job security – that’s if you have a job to care about.

ROFLAMO – there’s no such thing but don’t tell the perms that or they won’t be able to sleep…

The place I currently work just made a load of perms redundant (cos they are sh1te at there jobs) and kept the contractors – technically illegal I believe but there has never been such a thing as job security in an sector if the rank and file are not in a union…

Hackneyrider – we keep seeing the same thing. My company is all contractors and 4 have a shareholding in my company. In the last 2 months we’ve been working on stuff thats looked a bit shaky , then they lay off the perms and keep us because i deliberately put in a 10 day exit with no questions and only 10 days payoff – once they know they can chop you no questions they tend not to – its weird !

I pay £30 per month for my accountant and she’s good and fit (does it matter?) Ltd is easy to set up, cheaper to run (if your accountant is hal-decent), you’ll need VAT reg. so nobody knows how small you are (as a business). Otherwise, enjoy!