Reply to: Keeping company finances private?

[ladymuck]

Thanks again. There's no agents involved and personal payments are not uncommon. Regarding agents, I was told by a colleague recently that online "expert networks" will pay him directly into his personal account.

Ok I'm off to find that accountant

I'm intrigued by your comment that personal payments are not uncommon. These online "expert networks" also sound a bit shifty unless you're talking about the likes of Fiverr or People Per Hour (or Only Fans).

What line of work are you in?

[Andy2022]

what is available for download from companies house is quite limited for a micro company accounts.
It certainly won't tell anyone how much you've earned.
Just assets, liabilities and loans.

As the creditors at the end of the year are often just corporation tax owing for the year and VAT for the next quarter, combined with information on changes in net assets / capital and reserves it's possible to make some educated guesses

It won't be a complete picture though

[Lance]

I really cant believe the circles that have been gone round in this thread to answer such a basic question: No, you cannot 'hide' what income you \ your Ltd has made in each accounting period.

It is the law to produce account which, surprise, surprise, give an overview of what was earned and what allowed expense there were leaving, hopefully, a profit.

Try circumvating that and you will be in trouble. However, you dont have to tell neighbours, friends and even family the name of your Ltd so they would have a hard job finding the info you do not want to disclose.

If you dont operate an Ltd, for UK contracting, your only other legal option is an umbrella.

If you work through agencies or even direct, the hirer will not accept any other vehicle except these two and certainly not a sole trader \ personal arrangement.

what is available for download from companies house is quite limited for a micro company accounts.
It certainly won't tell anyone how much you've earned.
Just assets, liabilities and loans.

[cojak]

That’s what happens when you’re too indulgent!

[BolshieBastard]

I really cant believe the circles that have been gone round in this thread to answer such a basic question: No, you cannot 'hide' what income you \ your Ltd has made in each accounting period.

It is the law to produce account which, surprise, surprise, give an overview of what was earned and what allowed expense there were leaving, hopefully, a profit.

Try circumvating that and you will be in trouble. However, you dont have to tell neighbours, friends and even family the name of your Ltd so they would have a hard job finding the info you do not want to disclose.

If you dont operate an Ltd, for UK contracting, your only other legal option is an umbrella.

If you work through agencies or even direct, the hirer will not accept any other vehicle except these two and certainly not a sole trader \ personal arrangement.

[cojak]

On some websites if you search for address by postcode you will see limited companies in the list of returned addresses.

That's how I found out my **** of a neighbour has a side hustle.

I didn’t know that. Well, at least you can dob him into HMRC because people usually aren’t tulip in just one aspect of their life.

[TheDude]

I would advise not telling your neighbours that you have a company in the first place.

On some websites if you search for address by postcode you will see limited companies in the list of returned addresses.

That's how I found out my **** of a neighbour has a side hustle.

[northernladuk]

Thanks again. There's no agents involved and personal payments are not uncommon. Regarding agents, I was told by a colleague recently that online "expert networks" will pay him directly into his personal account.

Ok I'm off to find that accountant

It's possible but it just adds a risk to agency as they'll be on the hook if he doesn't pay his taxes (or something like that) so extremely uncommon in general contracting. Sounds like your colleague maybe doing something a little different to vanilla contracting and might be more akin to proper freelancing. But either way, that's an exception to the rule and getting some proper advice is the best way.

[elpail]

You aren't generally compelled to do anything. There is just a right way, an inefficient way and a wrong way. These are usually driven by the options available from the client and the most tax efficient way of doing this. Is Client A paying you personally a real thing? They are offering to do this or are you just making scenarios up? Pretty unusual for clients to pay direct. Almost impossible to get a gig with an agent in the chain to pay you personally as well. Why have them pay you personally where you have to pay full tax on it when you could put through a LTD to leverage low pay high divs etc.

You will need an accountant to help you with your LTD and work your tax out with a complex payment setup like yours so speak to them about the rest of the stuff. We can't educate you on every scenario with such little detail. You need a fundamental understanding of it all to be able to put jigsaw pieces together like this.

Thanks again. There's no agents involved and personal payments are not uncommon. Regarding agents, I was told by a colleague recently that online "expert networks" will pay him directly into his personal account.

Ok I'm off to find that accountant

[jamesbrown]

Thanks, that's going to be the issue. The client profiles, and their requirements, are so vastly different I'm hoping there's a possibility that HMRC could be convinced.

There's nothing, in principle, to stop self-employed work alongside work through a Ltd company, but it's a "looks like a duck" scenario. Unless there's a commercial motivation for separating them (i.e., because they are clearly different trades, which means a lot more than different clients/profiles), it's going to be unconvincing, particularly if there's a tax angle too. That said, I think you'll struggle at the first hurdle as clients/agents are potentially liable for underpaid tax when using self-employed contractors, so they will avoid you like the plague, if they have any sense.

[elpail]

Were HMRC to investigate, they would likely (correctly) consider it all part of the same trade and treat the overall income as income to your company..

Thanks, that's going to be the issue. The client profiles, and their requirements, are so vastly different I'm hoping there's a possibility that HMRC could be convinced.

[d000hg]

It is quite eye-opening the first time you realise you can look up filed accounts for any Ltd company. You wife or nosy-next-door-neighbour can quite easily get an idea what you earn as a contractor.

One common thing is not to use your home address as your business address because you can easily look up company/director by address. And don't name your company something very obvious like your name.

If you have a common name then there are probably loads of people with your name owning businesses. You can deter someone idly trawling Companies House but that's all.

[Craig@Clarity]

Some of you won't like the draft Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill then!

[northernladuk]

That could very well be true :-) Indulge me one more time....

Assume I'm providing the same services to all clients (all completely outside IR35):
- In May: I provide 40 hours consultancy to Client A and they pay me to my personal account
- In June. I provide 100 hours consultancy to a Client B which requires that I establish a company in order for us to transact and so I create company XYZ Ltd.
- In July: Client A comes back and requests another 40 hours consultancy.

Can I engage with Client A as before and have them make payments to my personal account? Or am I compelled to engage with Client A via my company XYZ Ltd.?

You aren't generally compelled to do anything. There is just a right way, an inefficient way and a wrong way. These are usually driven by the options available from the client and the most tax efficient way of doing this. Is Client A paying you personally a real thing? They are offering to do this or are you just making scenarios up? Pretty unusual for clients to pay direct. Almost impossible to get a gig with an agent in the chain to pay you personally as well. Why have them pay you personally where you have to pay full tax on it when you could put through a LTD to leverage low pay high divs etc.

You will need an accountant to help you with your LTD and work your tax out with a complex payment setup like yours so speak to them about the rest of the stuff. We can't educate you on every scenario with such little detail. You need a fundamental understanding of it all to be able to put jigsaw pieces together like this.

[jamesbrown]

Can I engage with Client A as before and have them make payments to my personal account? Or am I compelled to engage with Client A via my company XYZ Ltd.?

Were HMRC to investigate, they would likely (correctly) consider it all part of the same trade and treat the overall income as income to your company.

As others have said, complete privacy is a fantasy as a small company director in the UK. You can mitigate what gets shared (e.g., home address), but anyone interested can poke around easily enough and with good reason.