Working abroad

[tim123]

Normal practice for an overseas assignment would be for you to charge a daily rate plus travel AND accommodation expenses in the destination country.

Not in my world it's not.

The daily rate is the daily rate and your Xs come out of that. If you have high expenses you get to keep less and if you have low expenses you will get to keep more.

You might manage to get a better rate out of the agency because of high expenses (by convincing him that you wont take the job otherwise), but the client is unlikely to be moved, IME. Expenses are your problem, not his, he's "employing" a consultant to sove his problems, not to create them.

tim

[XLMonkey]

You might manage to get a better rate out of the agency because of high expenses (by convincing him that you wont take the job otherwise), but the client is unlikely to be moved, IME. Expenses are your problem, not his, he's "employing" a consultant to sove his problems, not to create them.

tim

If they were recruiting in Australia, I would agree. However, the OP's situation is different - the client specifically wants someone from the UK to go to Australia. Effectively, this is making the travel part of the requirement.

[beaker]

Am I better off trying to negotiate accomodation and travel expenses with the agent or direct with the client? Arguably it doesn't affect the agent as there's nothing in it for them, as opposed to if I increased my rate.

[Burrow01]

Am I better off trying to negotiate accomodation and travel expenses with the agent or direct with the client? Arguably it doesn't affect the agent as there's nothing in it for them, as opposed to if I increased my rate.

If you negotiate the accom and travel with the agency they will only pass it on to the client. But your contract will be with the agency, and so they would be the correct people to agree the terms with.

Pete

[Durkin32]

Hopefully this may help..

I was contracting for an Israeli telecoms company and was asked to spend 3 months in Tel-Aviv ( late 2000 before the intifida started. Great town during peace time) ....so what i did was asked to be treated like a permanent employee for expenses purposes.. i.e. I would require per-diem / hotel and car rental as granted to a permie employee along with my rate.
Spoke to HR on the client site and they agreed... Then told this to the agent ( at least they wouldn't get a cut of any proposed increase in my rate ) and the agent passed the money on to me. I was then able to wrote off all these as expenses on my company account along with a tax break as i working out of my resident country for over 90 days continuous but still remaining a tax resident in Ireland .. so it was worth it..
The only draw-back was ( didn't think this through) that i did have to wait until after my 3 months were completed for my expenses to be reimbursed, so credit card was thoroughly burned paying my hotel bills... but that was the only solution I could think of…

[Durkin32]

Also forgot to menetion i also billed for flying time to Israel ad back... it was a about 7 hours each way from Dublin ( via Heathrow) ... as it was for work purposes... and they paid up too..