State of the Market

[Snooky]

It's an agile term for a team...

I thought that was a tribe? I'm so out of touch with this Agile BS

[Bluenose]

I agree. I have an accountant who can do inside or outside seamlessly. So, I don't really see how I lose out?

It depends if you see yourself as an independent consultant / freelancer (some people don't like the term consultant) who wants the true flexibility that brings (the new world) or, are comfortable and happy subscribing to the old world which is overwhelmingly inside IR35 FCSA, London m25 centric, at your desk 3 days a week etc.

There is not a right or wrong answer, its down to personal preference but the latter ties you directly to HMRC and the U.K.

[oliverson]

And good for you as you could afford to take a "long time out"... not everyone can do that as shown by your mate, although I doubt he was actually forced to take anything. What I don't get is why it's "ruinous"? Bearing in mind I was suggesting that if someone couldn't get a 600/day outside then 600/day inside still isn't too shabby, certainly not ruinous.

Because if you have a big family and large outgoings and used to working outside IR35, catching up from an earlier spell on the bench, then you're thrust into an inside role where you receive little more than half of the day rate, you're going to be in trouble. When. you factor in ongoing financial commitments that your Ltd company has (Bounce Back Loan, vehicle leases, accountancy, mobile phones, etc) and there's no money going into the company from fee earning to pay for it, it amplifies the problem further. So, you're faced with putting net wages, after heavy taxation, into your Ltd in order to meet those obligations. There's also the question of no VAT being charged, so whether right or wrong, we've all done it in hard times, you may have used that extra 20% as working capital while you get back on your feet. Gone.

[oliverson]

How is taking an IR35 contract selling your soul to the devil?

It's against everything a genuine contractor would believe imho. You're also generating a load of tax for a government who was happy to throw you under a bus in the pandemic, in terms of covid support, and committed to waging war on the self-employed. Further, the arseholes you're working with are now having YOU pay THEIR Employers National Insurance liability, along with the Apprenticeship Levy, all while not being able to claim any of the expenses you may incur in making that happen. My expenses when I contracted in London banking were around £ 30k per year. Imagine paying that out of your heavily taxed inside IR35 income! Be better off working at McDonalds locally.

[TheDude]

It's against everything a genuine contractor would believe imho. You're also generating a load of tax for a government who was happy to throw you under a bus in the pandemic, in terms of covid support, and committed to waging war on the self-employed. Further, the arseholes you're working with are now having YOU pay THEIR Employers National Insurance liability, along with the Apprenticeship Levy, all while not being able to claim any of the expenses you may incur in making that happen. My expenses when I contracted in London banking were around £ 30k per year. Imagine paying that out of your heavily taxed inside IR35 income! Be better off working at McDonalds locally.

If you were paying £30k expenses to work in London I assume that was to gain access to London rates.

i live in Essex and it is less than an hour to London. I am also paying a premium to access London rates which I suck up as the cost of living.

[rocktronAMP]

I thought that was a tribe? I'm so out of touch with this Agile BS

Tribes and Captains -- isn't that Spotify from about 10 years ago. https://blog.crisp.se/wp-content/upl...ifyScaling.pdf or here https://www.growly.io/spotify-engine...rs-and-guilds/

Then is Netflix idea of Agile -- https://medium.com/scrum-alliance/th...e-6ea9a0e7f2b8 5 years old

When will organisations learn about CONWAY'S LAW already?!
Also micro-aggressions and toxic characters are blockers to change.
Good luck changing the mind of a person inside an organisation who have authority, influence and representation to block your inner motivation.
If that person fighting to protect 15 years work in a pension, or wants their big bonus. No chance.
I've been there and done that with the Agile is the New Way and people who said no to Remote Working ...
With some of those guys (and gals), only environment and real world circumstances can root them out a.k.a covid

Whether pod, tribe, squad or coven then "it is always a people problem in the end" - Tom DeMarco http://jonjagger.blogspot.com/2010/0...e-problem.html

[rocktronAMP]

If you were paying £30k expenses to work in London I assume that was to gain access to London rates.

i live in Essex and it is less than an hour to London. I am also paying a premium to access London rates which I such up as the cost of living.

What Oliverson just said does it not ring any alarms, well does it?

Look at the lack of expenses that you cannot claim from an Inside IR35 contract?!

When I was contracting in 2019 as Outside IR35, I luckily invested in a new Apple MacBook Pro laptop 16" retina display with touch bar for about £3240 or close to it. 32GB RAM, 1TB disk and decent video card. I wish now with retrospect that I invested in the best graphic card and disk £5000 with the top customised machine available. It was before the M1 chip. I expensed that MBP as a pre-tax expense against my r*** business. I saved 25-30% in cost with this MBP. I also bought an iPhone Max about 6 months earlier.

With Outside IR35 you could claim travel costs: rail fare, car mileage and car parking at the station for commuting to central London. You could also invest in Udemy and PluralSight and other AWS certifications for yourself as a contractor and claim them all as expenses. If you want to go a tech conference in Barcelona, I could claim the cost of the entry ticket and also flights from Heathrow/Gatwick there to Barce and back again and also including hotel bills. All I had to do is produce a receipt and the conference registration to my accountant. (You can't claim for a summer family trip to Lanzarote, because that is not business;-) Nowadays, I don't go to many conferences anymore, because it coming out of PAYE (I went permanent in 2021).

Inside IR35 just sucks, because that nice Outside IR35 world is large gone in 2023. You now have to beg an in manager for more money and try to increase your inside rate to cover it - good luck finding £1000 per day inside ir35.

If you are contractor now then you are in the first line to go if the business has to lay off folk. It is a very worrying, because business are complaining that they have no margin or little margins - and then the same business contradict this sentinent when they outsource to the top BS consultancies with body shops. I don't wish this on anyone on this forum. I don't see how an Inside IR35 contractor save faster now than a permanent employee over the medium term unless you are top of the pile. If you are the creme de la creme why are you working Inside IR35, you should be consulting as an Outsider and constantly getting SDS. You should be contracting short term 3 months at A and then moving like a r*** locust to B and then to C and then taking a big holiday break and then returning back to A ...

[TheDude]

If you are the creme de la creme why are you working Inside IR35, you should be consulting as an Outsider and constantly getting SDS. You should be contracting short term 3 months at A and then moving like a r*** locust to B and then to C and then taking a big holiday break and then returning back to A ...

I never said I was the creme de la creme but I am currently netting more inside IR35 than I was outside so why bother chasing short term outside gigs? It only takes a few weeks on the bench to wipe out any gains.

[TheGreenBastard]

I never said I was the creme de la creme but I am currently netting more inside IR35 than I was outside so why bother chasing short term outside gigs? It only takes a few weeks on the bench to wipe out any gains.

How is this possible, were your outside rates just that low, or is this a form of copium?

[eek]

How is this possible, were your outside rates just that low, or is this a form of copium?

It's simple

Outside IR35 rate in my field is max £600 a day (usually consultancies)

Inside IR35 rates are £700-£750 (usually banks)...