Web filing (shared access)

[hobnob]

Just for completeness, you have 2 other options:
* Renew your contract at this client through the current agency.
* Leave this client at the end of the year, do something else for a few months (not necessarily a full year), then come back to this client via your mate's company.
...

[hobnob]

Yes, you can verify at a Post Office (after you've done some stuff on the website to prepare):
How to prove your identity for Companies House at the Post Office - GOV.UK
Edit: not all post offices offer this service, but you can search that website for one near you.

If you need...

[hobnob]

Do you have a specific source for this? I've had a quick look at the ONS website, but I can't see anything obvious:
Births, deaths and marriages - Office for National Statistics...

[hobnob]

I agree that being a company director is still working. Personally, I haven't claimed JSA or UC, even when I've been on the bench for several months between contracts.

However, this reminds me of previous discussions about "My spouse does the filing for my limited company, so I pay...

[hobnob]

What difference does that make? I.e. if a company is VAT registered, they just hold onto the extra money to give to HMRC. The contractor doesn't get an extra 20% bonus on their daily rate!

It's useful to be able to reclaim VAT on what your company spends, but I doubt that this would be...

[hobnob]

I agree with your main point about people showing off. However, I think your sums are a bit wrong here.

£1,400/day x 365 days/year = £511,000/year
However, most people aren't going to work 7 days a week.

£1,400/day x 220 days/year = £308,000/year
That's probably...

[hobnob]

No - as I said in my original post, this doesn't affect my limited company because I'm the only director/shareholder, so I'm not sharing an account with anyone.

My accountants have offered to submit the confirmation statement for me, but I prefer to do it myself. Maybe that will be the...

[hobnob]

I assume that everyone's aware of the recent changes for identity verification:
Verifying your identity for Companies House - GOV.UK
Basically, as of last week (18th Nov), all directors and people with significant control need to have a gov.uk "one login" account. If they don't,...

[hobnob]

That's an interesting tool, thanks for sharing. A couple of thoughts:

I looked at one of the oldest adverts on your site (from 21st Oct):
Project Support Officer - £250/day - Edinburgh (On-site) | Outside IR35 Tech Jobs

When I clicked through to the LinkedIn post, it...

[hobnob]

Is the smart meter indoors or outdoors? If it's indoors, you could get a repeater. Here's some advice from Ofcom:
Using a repeater to improve your indoor mobile phone signal...

[hobnob]

The main snag is that these contributions would be a percentage of your gross salary, so you'd still be paying employer's NI (and apprenticeship levy) based on that figure. It might still be worthwhile, but I'd need to do some sums after the final rules are published....

[hobnob]

A few thoughts:

If the limited company's year end was 30th Sep, have you (OP) already submitted the year end return, or is that still pending? You might want to delay that for as long as possible, to give you more flexibility about how you classify the dividends vs director loan. However,...

[hobnob]

If you're just doing Citrix then it can be a low spec device, because the apps will be run in the VM. I've seen some organisations that use Chromebooks for this.

Will you need to use the built-in keyboard/mouse/screen, or will the client provide a docking station for that? That might influence...

[hobnob]

Have you taken more dividends than profit? I.e. have you taken dividends based on your company's predicted income (until Feb)? If so, I believe you'd need to convert the excess dividends into a director loan (which fits in with what you said about repaying). However, it might be worth starting a separate...

[hobnob]

That's not entirely true. Most (all?) councils will reduce council tax for people on low incomes:
Apply for Council Tax Reduction - GOV.UK

That said, there are some edge cases where the current system isn't really fair. E.g. suppose that a group of university students are sharing...