Reply to: avoid 40% dividend tax

[seanraaron]

I was in the telecoms bit of my last company which was part of the energy division. Not a happy time I can tell you before I left/got shown the door.

[Fred Bloggs]

Is this due the oil price plummeting?

That is the root cause, as a result there are thousands of engineers on the bench the world over. Billions of dollars of projects have been canned. In past times I'd find work in petrochem manufacture that typically booms when gas/oil prices are low. But now that probably 90% of our industry has gone and the 10% rump left is foreign owned, there is no petrochem work this time around. O&G is a very international business and we in the UK are not best placed to compete.

[TheFaQQer]

Sheesh I'd never read Richard's thread before. What became of him later?

He stopped using that particular sockie.

[ChimpMaster]

Sheesh I'd never read Richard's thread before. What became of him later?

To think, that we're now on the cusp of a huge recession / depression and could well see longer bench times again. I'd like to think I'm prepared for it, which perhaps I am financially, but mentally it's another matter.

[oracleslave]

Thanks, I'm not giving up just yet! But the permie jobs market seems just as bad at present, so there's no options there either.

Is this due the oil price plummeting?

[NickNick]

Thanks for the advice everyone.
...

Is a shame though, feels like I've been putting the hours in for nothing. Im sure I'll thank myself down the line tho.

Well, not nothing, but 70? 80? thousand in to your house in the first 9 months of the tax year.

[jamesbrown]

Sorry to hear this and hope it changes soon but thanks for coming on and explaining there is the other side to contracting.

+1 Valuable post for n00bs. You can't prepare much better than an 18mo warchest. It's easy to lose sight of the downsides of contracting during a boom, but they become pretty apparent during a downturn, as currently being experienced in oil/gas.

[Fred Bloggs]

Sorry to hear this and hope it changes soon but thanks for coming on and explaining there is the other side to contracting.

Thanks, I'm not giving up just yet! But the permie jobs market seems just as bad at present, so there's no options there either.

[northernladuk]

That's exactly why I posted. 18 months ago I would never have envisaged over a year with no work and none in sight.

Sorry to hear this and hope it changes soon but thanks for coming on and explaining there is the other side to contracting.

[Fred Bloggs]

That's exactly why I posted. 18 months ago I would never have envisaged over a year with no work and none in sight.

[seanraaron]

This is a rather sobering thread. Not that I didn't consider the possibility of dry spells, but I was planning a nice summer holiday on the assumption of an extension to my current contract. The lack of actual work makes getting to six months far from certain, but worst case would be blowing my wad on airplane tickets and then having no cushion, which seems unwise. Starting to think this should be put off another year maybe...

[Fred Bloggs]

You can claim JSA once you individually and the company itself have below £16K. Depending on your personally circumstances and where you live this means you can get help with other things now or sooner so aren't completely in the sh*t.

Thanks SE, I have a small company pension in payment, so I don't qualify, I looked into that.

[handyandy]

Just a word of advice to the OP - if you want to post questions on how to avoid tax you should probably set yourself up with a pseudonym - HMRC do read stuff here and you don't want to flag yourself as an 'avoider' because apparently that is just plain immoral (and they will try to use every trick they have to wring you dry).

[SueEllen]

There is. Large number of LinkedIn profiles saying "Available for new role" is some evidence of that. I had an 18 month war chest which depletes at the end of May. If things don't pick up it'll be the end of MyCo Ltd for me.

You can claim JSA once you individually and the company itself have below £16K. Depending on your personally circumstances and where you live this means you can get help with other things now or sooner so aren't completely in the sh*t.

[Fred Bloggs]

There's a lot of this around at the moment, or so I've read. Winter is here, and it could be a long one.

There is. Large number of LinkedIn profiles saying "Available for new role" is some evidence of that. I had an 18 month war chest which depletes at the end of May. If things don't pick up it'll be the end of MyCo Ltd for me.