tax avoidance - not just footballers

[Paul88]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/8306003/David-Camerons-new-spin-doctor-and-his-tax-avoidance-plan.html

Great to see the telegraph drawing attention to this oh so common scam of people avoiding tax by pretending they are a company offering services when really they are just an individual working for a single employer.

Instead of paying income tax and national insurance they just pay corporation tax at 21%, soon to be reduced to 20%. And the employer avoids employers' national insurance.

She is avoiding over £20000 in tax each year.

Shall we see whether this gets discussed on newsnight when Paxman is doing the same thing...

on the other hand, if your contracts do fall under IR35 then paying yourself a salary of "say £25k" does not comply with the IR35 rules, and by not applying them properly you are potentially evading (not avoiding here) tax.

Dh's contracts so not sure of all details - he's the one who deals with the accountants. I'm not up on the fine details of the contracts and the legislation - I just do the payroll. I'm confident we're ok for tax as friends in the exact same arrangement did get investigated by hmrc (random check) and there were no problems.

What is your personal tax set up? Are you an accountant as you seem to know a lot about it.

my personal tax set-up, as was probably quite clear from the comment I made about wishing I could route my services through a limited company, is that I am an employee.
And yes, a chartered accountant.

Just wanted to check - paul88 seemed to be bashing all limited company structures as tax dodges and if turned out s/he has one.

Dh's contracts (there's a few with multiple clients) are all ok for IR35 - I got confused by what you meant by falling under IR35 whether than meant being compliant or not.

So it sounds like we were too cautious and payed more tax than we legally had to when I was a sahm - I'm just barely a higher rate tax payer now so there's no advantage to share income now.

If you wanted to benefit from dividend tax rates you could always go out on your own - I think there's a real market for accountants god small businesss who get sick of the call centre approach by the larger firms. Of course the stress and uncertainty can be crap - it's one of the main reason I'm back at work as we found it very unsettling to not have any security.

Replace god with for - sorry, rubbish predictive text!

yes I could set up on my own, but I am pretty risk averse, and like the security (hmm) of employment. I was considering it before my ex left - but that would have been with the fall back of his income.
Plus tbh the back-up that a reasonably sized firm gives you in terms of access to greater knowledge banks, ability to off clients a wider range of services etc.
I work for a mid-tier firm, but we are local in outlook - local accountants with a bigger back-up. I would certainly hope that my clients don't feel they get a call-centre approach from me, in fact I would be fairly horrified if they did think that.

And I agree on the OP, start the thread bashing something which it turns out that he is doing. Oh but the figures involved with the people he is bashing are much higher, so it is ok for him, but not for them .