umbrella Paranoia

[NotAllThere]

What kind of question is that?

Certainly a chat bot could replace some posters. A simple one would suffice. You'd just have to program it to say "Have you asked your accountant?".

[eek]

Certainly a chat bot could replace some posters. A simple one would suffice. You'd just have to program it to say "Have you asked your accountant?".

Mudskipper already has a bot that does that - other phrases (and even posters) were available as well.

[Paralytic]

Certainly a chat bot could replace some posters. A simple one would suffice. You'd just have to program it to say "Have you asked your accountant?".

I thought there was already one that did that, though it does seem to have a bug where it sometimes starts talking about other things it clearly has no clue about.

[Paralytic]

Only when someone comes along with a better solution will the FCSA become irrelevant for agencies.

If only someone would do something about that....

[northernladuk]

If only someone would do something about that....

They could try but FCSA will just quosh it by banning or penalising members that are associated with it so it can't take off.

[BLife]

And the Professional Passport ones don't even pretend to hide their none compliance on their own websites anymore (Chester if you are reading this, that's why I'm refusing to even talk to you - and no I won't name names as that's doing your job for you).

Agencies use FCSA and professional passport as they are lazy, and FCSA claim that membership solves all problems agencies have.

And it did until Section 61O of the 2020 Finance Act arrived where the tax liability does belong to the agency / end client and separately someone worked out how to offer real time non-anonymous compliance checks rather than year old carefully select anonymous ones.

BTW that person is me and all should be revealed sometime in December ready for a January Launch and full go live in late February.

Oooh I look forward to hearing all about that.......

[BLife]

Serious question: who might it cost a lot of money?

Yes, their almost closed-door policy for new applicants is verging on an anti-competitive use of their market position, leveraging the laziness of agencies, but the competition for customers within the members is there and is therefore keeping costs at a fairly stable level, relative to those outside of FCSA.

If all FCSA members started gradually increasing their prices, then I could then see a claim of some sort of price fixing going on.

I'm seeing some reference to some Umbrellas charging apprenticeship levy when they should not be - if that is the case, those Umbrellas should be named so that individuals can ensure it doesn't happen to them. But, there is also an onus on individual contractors to ensure they are aware of what they are being charged.

The problem is HMRC will not disclose the information because of data protection. So a contractor can not ask HMRC to confirm receipt of the levy deducted from their wage. Its unfair hence my anger and paranoia.