Life after April : Anybody had experience of Beacon for MVL?

[CosmicWave]

I am one of the many contractors who 'work' at one of the big Banks who have done a blanket contract assessment of 'caught by IR35' come April.

Basically we have been told that we must switch over to PAYE either with my agency or one of a few select Umbrella companies. However, luckily one of the Umbrella's allow Pension Sacrifice (thank the Lord).

Therefore the plan is :

Carry on as usual using my Ltd Company until 1st March.

This is where I am confused....

If you are saying your end-client has determined you to be caught to be Inside IR35, I don't think it means you are caught on and after April 6th.
Based on that assessment, you are caught now! Today!
This is because, I think, there is no new law coming in force specifying what makes you inside or outside.
That bit of the law is exactly the same as is now.
What changes come April is who makes that determination.

If your client has decided you are inside IR35 and communicated it to you today, then essentially they have invalidated any determination you and probably QDOS et al have done for you, since if client themselves think you are Inside, you are inside.

There is no way you can be Outside today (by your own determination) when your own client says you are Inside now, since there is no way they can mean you are Inside only from 6th April.

All that they are saying is that they will start deducting taxes etc. come 6th April.
Until then if you think you are outside, when the client has already said the contract / Working practices are Inside, I think you are already running a huge risk as of tomorrow continuing with a broken (and possibly invalid) self-determination of Outside.
I am not saying this for just you, it is the case of anyone like you.

I humbly think, what many people think here is that some new law change makes the client determination to be applicable only from 6th April, whilst the possible reality is that their determination today clearly means they have invalidated your current status and self-determination (i.e. even before 6th April).

You should be looking to leave them now. Not on April 6th.
That is my humble opinion, going by the fact that there is no new law with new criteria that says what is inside or outside., That law is exactly same as it is now.

[Acme Thunderer]

I thought the living wage was the legal min you could earn per hour, can you not choose to take that as salary or pension contribution, the NLW being legislation controlling the rate rather than pay method?

I thought 100% up to £40K can go into a pension.

Your Day rate is not what you earn it is what the Umbrella earns. Salary Sacrifice then comes out along with employer NI and holiday pay to get your gross pay and it is the gross pay that can’t be below NMW.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[technobabble]

Living wage

I thought the living wage was the legal min you could earn per hour, can you not choose to take that as salary or pension contribution, the NLW being legislation controlling the rate rather than pay method?

I thought 100% up to £40K can go into a pension.

[MrContractor85]

OP did you use Beacon in the end?
Also, website seems to suggest it's 2,500 + VAT...

[eek]

You can't pay everything into your pension - the umbrella company needs to pay you at least the minimum (living) wage.

[adubya]

They seem to give the impression that they can close the company down quickly (24 hours if needed)

"the process of placing your Company into MVL can take as little as 24 hours from instruction."

starting the process vs getting the £££ are two separate events.

"We then obtain post Liquidation tax clearance from HMRC, settle any outstanding liabilities of the Company. Once liquidation clearance from HMRC has been received, we convene and advertise a final meeting to be held 8 weeks later. This will conclude the Liquidation, and the Company will be struck off 3 months later at Companies House."

Although it's not clear at what point in the process you would receive the cash. Somewhere inbetween 24hrs and 5 months

[mogga71]

I am one of the many contractors who 'work' at one of the big Banks who have done a blanket contract assessment of 'caught by IR35' come April.

Basically we have been told that we must switch over to PAYE either with my agency or one of a few select Umbrella companies. However, luckily one of the Umbrella's allow Pension Sacrifice (thank the Lord).

Therefore the plan is :

Carry on as usual using my Ltd Company until 1st March.
Luckily I have not paid anything in my Pension this current tax year ... unlike the previous years.
1st March I switch to the Umbrella. However I don't intend to actually invoice for March until April.
Come April I am going to tell the Umbrella to pay everything into my pension (ie. Pension Sacrifice) ... this means I can pay £40k into pension for 2020-21 and when this has been done also pay in another £40K for the current tax year (2019-20). That means £80k into Pension without paying any deductions at all ... the only small fees I need to pay are to the Umbrella Company. After the £80k has been paid in then I will then have no choice but to go PAYE and pay the taxes (Employer, Employee NI etc.)

However this leaves me with the question as what to do with money in the Company Bank Account. I want to close the Company as quickly as possible and obviously pay as little tax as possible. I am therefore very likely to go down the MVL route (Members Voluntary Liquidation - MVL | Contractor UK). I think I will need to act quickly as this looks like something HMRC will try and close down as quickly as possible as I would wager thousands of contractors will also be going down the MVL route.

Has anybody on here had any experiences of using Beacon http://mvlsrus.co.uk)? They seem to give the impression that they can close the company down quickly (24 hours if needed) and only charge about £2K. Seems too good to be true.