Newbie - Needs advice

[NotAllThere]

[QUOTE=badger7579;615073]

Ah ok I missunderstood. I thought you were saying that the way you were paid by your company could determine your IR35 status.

I meant that the higher the salary you pay yourself, the lower the chance of investigation. E.g. if you pay out 95% of your profit as salary, then you're extremely unlikely to be the subject of an IR35 investigation, because there would be no extra tax to collect. Obviously you'd be pretty silly (or a subscriber to NL definition of "fair") to do that if you are confident you are outside IR35. It would seem to me though, if you paid 0% then the potential tax take is higher than if you paid 25% in salary. Hence, the lower the salary, the higher the risk.

could be wrong though!

[malvolio]

Let's just get one thing clear - you are not investigated for IR35. Your PAYE provisions are investigated either as a random selection or becuase there is some disconnect or other error between company and personal paperwork, or you have a history of late or sloppy filing. That is an aspect enquiry; what will happen is that if there is a faint hint you are tax avoiding MGB just pretending to be a contractor, they will move on to an IR35 trawl.

You can't avoid random selection, but at 10 a week across 1.2m contractors it's not bad odds. You can however keep your paperwork accurate, timely and consistent. Real businesses don't cock up their returns or put 30% of their income down as business expenses.

[MikeC1984]

Me again!

Thanks everyone for all your advice, I think i am getting more and more excited about the thought of contracting though dont feel just at the moment I am in a financial situation to do so (few more months saving - which will prob mean me leaving it till after xmas)
I understand as a permie the only real way I will get into contracting is to either a) and prob unlikely find a contracting wishing to wait my 4 weeks notice or b) hand my notice in and start looking like hell for a good contract

I was just thinking though. The company I work for as a permie (and have a good relationship with) I reckon there is a 60/40 chance (in my favour) they would take me on, on a short term contract (say 3 months) to help the transition of my role to - probably - another internal employee. There is no direct replacement at the moment to my role and they dont really have the budget to recruit externally. I know the director well and reckon if it for 3 or 6 months he may go for it.

If I was to do this would this immediately and unavoidably become inside IR35?

I am thinking that for this initial dip into the contracting world I wouldnt mind working within IR35 and this would give me the additional income I need for 3 months. What do you think?

On a slightly more depressing note I had a call from an agency today for a contract £100 a day over my base rate which they wanted to put me forward for but I dont have SC clearance and my notice period is too long as they want an ASAP start

Do you require to be SC cleared for alot of the roles?

[TykeMerc]

You don't need to be SC cleared for all that many roles, but to get on the SC cleared bandwagon can be a complete pain in the nads.

Since recruiters looking for contract staff typically have a relatively immediate need (due to duff planning as often as not) it can be rather tricky. Plus of course to get submitted for clearance you need a government or List X company sponsor. Subsequently an already cleared candidate with clearance in place will typically beat a similar but uncleared one.