Reply to: MBA as an Expense

[TheFaQQer]

Pay for the mba, stick the business plan and contract in the draw and hope that hector doesnt come knocking. If he does, you have enough paperwork to at least try and justify your stance. Worse case scenario most likely he makes you pay the BIK.

"draw" is what you do in art classes; "drawer" is where you put things.

[Old Greg]

Foundation or Advanced?

Sorry - not been around for a couple of days. Week long foundation/practitioner course.

[pickle]

a.

Put a small business plan together, showing how your company proposes to use the newly minted MBA director. Put a contract in place with your employee whereby the employee agrees to return and work for the company for a minimum of 2 years at xxx salary after the mba, otherwise they agree to repay the costs of the MBA back to the company (this is what the big consultancies etc do). The business plan might even show that the 2 year point is the "break even", ie the period after which your increased post mba fee income will equal the mba costs.

Pay for the mba, stick the business plan and contract in the draw and hope that hector doesnt come knocking. If he does, you have enough paperwork to at least try and justify your stance. Worse case scenario most likely he makes you pay the BIK.


Alternatively, as you wont be working during the mba, just use your tax allowance to draw the money out of the company free of income tax anyway. I decided that route was less hassle / risk in the end.

[TheFaQQer]

a) Employ a project manager [too expensive]
b) Pay to train an (the only) existing employee
c) Wait to see if the director pays for the training himself [unlikely; it's expensive and he's not even in the 40% income tax bracket!]
d) Shut down for a couple of years while the director goes perm for someone else and gets them to pay for training/experience.
e) Stop trying to build the business.

What's the best from the company perspective?

b, d or e

Depends on the training that you are going for - there are certainly cheaper (and perhaps more relevant) training courses than £30k for an MBA. I recently did some training through my company to expand my skill set, move onto a different track, and potentially increase earnings.

The key question is whether the training will directly benefit the business - if you can argue that it will, then spend wisely and expense it. Setting up a company to raise £30k so that you can spend it on training does not class as a business expense. Running a company and then paying for training and increasing your sales / rate is of direct benefit to the business, so claim it.

Alternatively, go permie for a while and get some more training.

[timh]

Go back into the depths of these fora and see if you can find me commenting on the value of qualifications versus experience when I'm reading CVs.

I want to see evidence you have done something, not a paper qualification that says you can. I don't give a stuff about MBAs, Foundation certs or whatever, if you can't deal with people and can't show me you've delivered something close to what I want you to deliver, you're of no use to me. You're a contractor, hired to do things, not a permie hired to progress up the career ladder.

Yes, OK, we know what your personal opinion is about the requirement (or lack of) for qualifications and I happen to agree with you completely. However, my company does not get lucrative project management contracts ostensibly because nobody who works for it has PM qualifications or very much PM experience. So the company has 5 options:

a) Employ a project manager [too expensive]
b) Pay to train an (the only) existing employee
c) Wait to see if the director pays for the training himself [unlikely; it's expensive and he's not even in the 40% income tax bracket!]
d) Shut down for a couple of years while the director goes perm for someone else and gets them to pay for training/experience.
e) Stop trying to build the business.

What's the best from the company perspective?

[TheFaQQer]

I'm pretty sure I've seen you comment that a lady turning up with 2 Ds straight out of college had the required qualifications.

[Sockpuppet]

Go back into the depths of these fora and see if you can find me commenting on the value of qualifications versus experience when I'm reading CVs.

I'm pretty sure I've seen you comment that a lady turning up with 2 Ds straight out of college had the required qualifications.

[malvolio]

Go back into the depths of these fora and see if you can find me commenting on the value of qualifications versus experience when I'm reading CVs.

I want to see evidence you have done something, not a paper qualification that says you can. I don't give a stuff about MBAs, Foundation certs or whatever, if you can't deal with people and can't show me you've delivered something close to what I want you to deliver, you're of no use to me. You're a contractor, hired to do things, not a permie hired to progress up the career ladder.

My last project was a $230m, two year migration. We hit the deadline, the budget and the required quality standards - in this case, zero operational failures and no unplanned service outages across 1800+ servers - and guess what, I don't have a PM qualification. That's what I mean when I say paperwork has zero value if you can't actually deliver.

[Let-Me-In]

How about a week long PRINCE2 certification course? If I have a spare week between contracts, I may do this and was planning to put it through as a legit business expense, which seems OK to me as it's not excessive compared to the business benefit. I'll ask my accountant anyway, but would anyone like to humour me with an opinion?

Foundation or Advanced?

[Old Greg]

How about a week long PRINCE2 certification course? If I have a spare week between contracts, I may do this and was planning to put it through as a legit business expense, which seems OK to me as it's not excessive compared to the business benefit. I'll ask my accountant anyway, but would anyone like to humour me with an opinion?

[Let-Me-In]

You don't think YourLittleCo would stand to gain hugely by investing in an MBA for its director? Its profits could double, or triple.

20:55

[timh]

BigCo can do it because part of their employment cost is staff training and development, and having qualified people assists their marketing. You aren't an employee of YourLittleCo, you're the owner. Big difference.

You don't think YourLittleCo would stand to gain hugely by investing in an MBA for its director? Its profits could double, or triple.

[RockyBalboa]

Type it into Google - you'll find plenty of affiliated universities that will give you an MBA for the right sum of money, based on your life experience rather than needing to turn up to classes and do any work.

Dead easy.

Regardless of 'life experience', this kind of misses the point and you better hope no job asks for your certificate and google's the non-existent univ.

[malvolio]

Not true, as a business expense it needs to be seen to be directly benefitting the business.

Which was my point. The OP asked about setting up a company in order to charge the cost of gaining an MBA against expenses. All I said was that fine, go ahead, but it would be seen as a BIK, since gaining the MBA would not be a primary business benefit to the company: arguably, since the company would have existed and had earned at least £30k profits, it clearly didn't need an MBA to attract work. I also asked why they thought my (and your) taxes should be used to subsidise his business

BigCo can do it because part of their employment cost is staff training and development, and having qualified people assists their marketing. You aren't an employee of YourLittleCo, you're the owner. Big difference.

And I make no apologies for being less than polite about it: it was a dumb question. If you can't handle short answers, don't go contracting.

[Ruprect]

but I guess UK taxman just want the self employed professionals not to grow in terms of their qualifications.

Not true, as a business expense it needs to be seen to be directly benefitting the business.