Reply to: Got "tricked" into this contracting business

[norfolk]

Norfolk, you are probably a temporary employee, in fact almost certainly. You'd know if you were a business. The agency probably will tell you are a contractor, and try to treat you as a "business". As a temporary employee they can't. Read your contract carefully, i.e. with whatever Umbrella co you've gone with. If necessary go and pay a visit to a lawyer.

That's correct, the whole "business"-thing they're pulling is very familiar. I'm not employed by anyone and the contract looks designed as if I had a company in place providing the services I do.

I think you could probably just hand in 4 weeks notice and there's probably not a lot they can do.

The other thing is this is a UK agency, so they're going to chase you through the Swedish legal system....pull the other one, absolutely not.

You probably do need professional advice on this but I suspect you could get out of your contract fairly easily.

Yes, I've actually spoken to a lawyer who said similar things as you do. Hopefully I can get out of this without committing any breach of contract.

Thanks!

[BlasterBates]

Norfolk, you are probably a temporary employee, in fact almost certainly. You'd know if you were a business. The agency probably will tell you are a contractor, and try to treat you as a "business". As a temporary employee they can't. Read your contract carefully, i.e. with whatever Umbrella co you've gone with. If necessary go and pay a visit to a lawyer.

I think you could probably just hand in 4 weeks notice and there's probably not a lot they can do.

The other thing is this is a UK agency, so they're going to chase you through the Swedish legal system....pull the other one, absolutely not.

You probably do need professional advice on this but I suspect you could get out of your contract fairly easily.

[Platypus]

Feck me just don't turn up, nothing will happen.

Move on.

Yes, my thoughts too. Slavery is illegal! No one can make you do anything. Walk away.

[norfolk]

You get about 300 krona (~£30) in your personal bank for each 1000 krona (~£100) you earn in Sweden. If the agent is from the UK I understand the problem as in the UK you get about £70 for every £100.

The income tax is ~30% and the social security amounts to the same so it's more like 1000 * 0,7^2 = SEK 490 in this case (there's a treshold where you get taxed more heavily also).

Not that it really matters but I have my reasons to believe the agent was simply full of it.

[dynamicsaxcontractor]

You get about 300 krona (~£30) in your personal bank for each 1000 krona (~£100) you earn in Sweden. If the agent is from the UK I understand the problem as in the UK you get about £70 for every £100.

[gingerjedi]

Feck me just don't turn up, nothing will happen.

Move on.

[d000hg]

Depends if the agent deliberately tried to hide that, or could tell the contractor wasn't aware and said nothing, in order to get a lower rate.

[The Agents View]

Yeah yeah yeah. Wrap stuff up in legalese so it's deliberately hard to understand and then claim no culpability.
Of course he didn't do his due diligence but he's not a contractor and as such you don't necessarily know you need to do a lot of due diligence in the first place... when you enter a new field you don't know the right questions to ask and I'm sure that happened to all of us once.

The contractor being liable for paying tax after payments have been made, is hardly making things hard to understand!!!

[d000hg]

However there are 3 or 4 newbies in the pro forums today, possible invasion or just normal life?

[d000hg]

What, exactly, is the problem?
What were you lead to expect, how were you lead to expect this?
What does your contract say?

Blaming the agent etc will not help you gain credibility here.

He didn't say he wants credibility. He's happy we say and think what we like, but is just hoping he might get some advice amongst that.

However, I will say that this is NOT the fault of the Agent. You have failed to do your due dilligence, you have been blinded by the monies involved, pre-tax (which is how we refer to your pay in the UK) and you have then failed to read, or understand the contract, before signing it.

This is like someone turning around to me and saying "you told me I'd get paid £50,000 per annum, but you failed to tell me I'd get taxed...." My reply would be a very simple "I told you the truth - it's not my fault that you think you're above the tax laws of this country"

Yeah yeah yeah. Wrap stuff up in legalese so it's deliberately hard to understand and then claim no culpability.
Of course he didn't do his due diligence but he's not a contractor and as such you don't necessarily know you need to do a lot of due diligence in the first place... when you enter a new field you don't know the right questions to ask and I'm sure that happened to all of us once.

[SueEllen]

"I've always personally found it better to be truthful with the client to some degree"
Is this the same as being economical with the truth?

Nope.

You tell the client as much as you think they want to hear.

In this case the client knows what the issue is so it's a case of getting them to agree to end the contract.

[Taita]

Better to do it now then in a contract with a agency who were in your country.


I've always personally found it better to be truthful with the client to some degree and come to an arrange with them to leave.


This is common in the UK regardless if you are a business or a consumer. The trick used by many companies of all sizes is not to put things down on paper and make sure contentious recordings disappear.

Therefore the onus is again on you to write things down with dates, times and who said what and send confirmation emails/letters of what was stated.

Obviously you don't do this most of the time but in situations i.e. insurance, mobile phone purchasing, where things are known to often go wrong for other people.


If the client is in your country then I don't advise you to do this as they can tell others about you by name. It's better to get them to agree they don't want you to do any work for them any more.

Companies don't want people working for them who clearly don't want to be there.

"I've always personally found it better to be truthful with the client to some degree"
Is this the same as being economical with the truth?

[norfolk]

It's a minefield.

It sure is, and it's a good lesson.

Not that it really matters now, but the agent was pulling a fast one this time: I mean, why else would he offer me the same exact number that he knew I earned at present and acted like it was the deal of a life time (i.e. after tax)? In any case, such things need to be put down on paper accordingly and while I did try that I wasn't stubborn enough to succeed.

As to your present predicament, you really need to sort it out with the client. Tell them you are unhappy and ask them to let you go or make some other arrangement. It doesn't happen often, but I have seen sufficiently large clients cancel their contract with an agency and organise another agency for the contractor concerned.

Yes, I'm working that angle as well but there seems to be some reluctancy from the client on cancelling my contract towards the agency and set me up with another.

Also, as I'm under a clause that won't allow me to provide any additional work for the client (I know, I should have objected to that) without a sizable fee, I will have a hard time sticking around after a potential cancellation.

[Sysman]

I was lead to expect a number of things: that everything was compliant, that the pay was supposed to be net and not a gross and so forth ("Oh, the term 'pay' means 'net' in the UK").

How I was lead to expect this? The guy at the agency told me stories: "Oh, so you make X before taxes at your current work? I'll offer you X in your account every month". Then the same guy pretends he doesn't know about my country's tax legislation. That sort of stuff.

"Net", "Gross" and "Pay" mean different things in different countries and you should learn the differences.

For example, as a permanent employee 30 years ago working with a team from Holland, I discovered that "How much do you earn?" was answered differently:

In the UK, the answer was "x thousand a year" and this figure was what you earned before tax and social deductions.
In Holland, the answer was "x thousand per month", and this figure was what you earned after tax and social deductions i.e. what actually hit your bank account every month.

My conclusion at the time was that the method used in Holland was a more accurate statement of your earning power.

When I first started in Switzerland it was different again. As a foreigner I had to pay tax at source and the way it worked here was that I had to pay both employer's and employee's social contributions. My payslips however only showed the employee's side of things, and the "per hour rate" printed already had the employer's social contributions deducted. They also transposed the meanings of "gross" and "net" as far as I understood those terms in English.

It's a minefield.

As to your present predicament, you really need to sort it out with the client. Tell them you are unhappy and ask them to let you go or make some other arrangement. It doesn't happen often, but I have seen sufficiently large clients cancel their contract with an agency and organise another agency for the contractor concerned.

[norfolk]

Better to do it now then in a contract with a agency who were in your country.


I've always personally found it better to be truthful with the client to some degree and come to an arrange with them to leave.


This is common in the UK regardless if you are a business or a consumer. The trick used by many companies of all sizes is not to put things down on paper and make sure contentious recordings disappear.

Therefore the onus is again on you to write things down with dates, times and who said what and send confirmation emails/letters of what was stated.

Obviously you don't do this most of the time but in situations i.e. insurance, mobile phone purchasing, where things are known to often go wrong for other people.


If the client is in your country then I don't advise you to do this as they can tell others about you by name. It's better to get them to agree they don't want you to do any work for them any more.

Companies don't want people working for them who clearly don't want to be there.

Thanks for your helpful post. Sadly, I realized these things too late and didn't see the agent's pattern of communication until in hindsight.

However, the client was quite surprised and not super-happy with their supplier when advised of this whole situation (not by me though) so I think we can arrange some mutual arrangement with me leaving on good terms. The client, or no one except the agency perhaps, holds this against me.

To be honest I would not actually feel too bad about yourself.

Okay, you might have been a bit naive but running a business is a learned skill and take time and experience to develop. You assumed you could trust the agent, lesson learned.

Although I have never come across an agent who lied this blatently so you were particuarly unlucky and he got you at just the right time. Like I said do not feel too bad, dishonest agents do this for a living and they know how to go about it, on my first contract he might well have caught me with the same sort of thing.

For future reference, not all agents are this dishonest but if you assume they all are then you will not go far wrong. Honest agents will not mind you covering yourself and checking facts.

Thanks for your kind words. I've gone through most of these feelings of self-hate already and have more or less chalked it up as life-experience now. It's not like I will fall for this again, let alone continue contracting. I've become ridiculously paranoid with any red tape or records that require any signature, and perhaps something good might come of that.