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Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

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Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#51

Post by Nope5005 »

I comment OP for trying this, but there are so many glaring omissions which could bite the ignorance of a minnow.

- Let's start with Crunch IT. Affiliated with the OP. They (like the rest) are surrounded by low paid interns and similar - they don't know the answer to your questions. Their accountants are rare as gold and have no time for you. That is fair enough given the price they charge (which has increased and become more 'diverse' each year)

- This isn't a game. The HMRC don't have an army of people, but they are gaining a machine of features who can see when you expense a TV.

- The HMRC are entirely ignorant to our work. They want a nice clean line between your work and life. What they don't appreciate is it is entirely a waste of resources. I buy two laptops - great. Fucked the HMRC and the environment - nice work :/

Lets start with this... total bullshit

Here's my favourite one:

- If you’ve spent more than 40% working at a client site - You’ve been there over 2 years - You ‘intent’ to work there for more than 2 years

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#52

Post by framp »

Nursie wrote: post #48
ticksoft wrote: post #45

I notice that business bank accounts are always mentioned in these sorts of lists. To me they seem like an extra overhead for no reason. You essentially have to ask a bank's permission and pay them just so they can accept your payments? So weird. I could understand it if you had a business with employees and you sold products on a daily basis with loads of transactions, or if you plan to get into debt... but for invo…

The business is a separate legal entity to you. A business bank account clearly demarks what is your money and what is not. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's a requirement to work with a lot of companies, if not a legal requirement for working with a ltd company. Business bank accounts can be had for free - most contractor-friendly accountants have an arrangement with Cater-Allen, for instance.

It's not a legal requirement and they're certainly not free AFAIK.

It is a requirement for partecipating in certain contests (eg: Microsoft had a program for investing in indie games company and they required to use a business account entitled to the company) but I still haven't heard such requirement from a client.

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#53

Post by new299 »

Nursie wrote: post #27
Nursie wrote: post #13

Why bother with a third party company registration service? You can do it yourself pretty easily through companies house. Do companiesmadesimple have any value-add? While I do share your cynicism about recruiters, I have also got most of my contracts through them. There are bad recruiters (vague job descriptions, never call you back) and there are good ones (We need someone here, you fit the bill, can we arrange a ti…

A few more comments - Rate - Daily is good, hourly can also work. My current client will pre-authorise overpayment of a few hours a week if I work them. A little income boost if I want it. IR35 - The 'own equipment' thing is a guideline only, and I don't think you'll fall foul of IR35 for using their equipment, particularly as many places only allow their equipment to be used on their networks. There are other reason…

> Rate - Daily is good, hourly can also work. My current client will pre-authorise overpayment of a few hours a week if I work them. A little income boost if I want it.

How do you manage your hours with a day rate? Is a work day 8 hours, or is it any day you worked for the company more than X hours?

I've been trying to move to logging time and equating 1 day to 8 hours work.

I find it fiddly to bill per day when perhaps I only needed to work 5 hours to complete one job and 3 on another day.

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#54

Post by Nursie »

new299 wrote: post #47
Nursie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite that simple, unfortunately. You can only claim it back on large expenditures if you're on the fixed-rate scheme (I think that's what it's called). Computer equipment is the prime one, but it has to be over £2K in a single spend. AFAICT most VAT on everyday expenses doesn't come back to you. OTOH you can charge the company for your lunch every day, which means you get that paid for before corporation tax, in…

> OTOH you can charge the company for your lunch every day, which means you get that paid for before corporation tax, income tax or anything else... Hmmm. I think my last accountant told me things like lunch every day were not billable to the company. But they weren't very good accountants. :) I didn't realise it was only spends over 2K that could be claimed back. Do you have a reference for that? Overall, VAT regist…

It was guidance from my accountant and other contractors have said the same. Receipted lunch and travel expenses are reclaimable when I am on a client site. Which I am most days, as I prefer to work closely with the client's team, though reserve the right to work from wherever I want. Most notably, last year, I did a few days work from a rented office in Australia where I was on holiday at the time! I claimed the office rental too...

Best I can find on VAT in a ten-second search is this -

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-733-fl...

Sections 15.1 and 15.2 are where you'll want to look.

Oh, and the overview section from this much simpler guide :)

https://www.gov.uk/vat-flat-rate-scheme

--edit--

This £2K thing probably does only apply to companies on flat-rate schemes.

The idea is that for a small business, the overheads of processing all the VAT refund stuff are just too large, so you give relief on large purchases only, and the income boost I mentioned in the other post is probably supposed to make up for it. Or something. I don't claim to fully understand!

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#55

Post by monkeyprojects »

Nursie wrote: post #27
Nursie wrote: post #13

Why bother with a third party company registration service? You can do it yourself pretty easily through companies house. Do companiesmadesimple have any value-add? While I do share your cynicism about recruiters, I have also got most of my contracts through them. There are bad recruiters (vague job descriptions, never call you back) and there are good ones (We need someone here, you fit the bill, can we arrange a ti…

A few more comments - Rate - Daily is good, hourly can also work. My current client will pre-authorise overpayment of a few hours a week if I work them. A little income boost if I want it. IR35 - The 'own equipment' thing is a guideline only, and I don't think you'll fall foul of IR35 for using their equipment, particularly as many places only allow their equipment to be used on their networks. There are other reason…

Professional working day = fine if you client is nice can result in being expected to work stupid hours for no benefit..

IR35 equipment is an utterly irrelevant point. The real factors are:-

Right of Substitution (I can replace myself with Fred and the client can't complain) Mutuality of Obligation which means that the client doesn't need to pay if they have no work for you to do regardless of the length of the contract Where you were last. you can't be a permanent member of staff on Friday and start back in the same desk as a contractor on Monday morning.

Lots of stuff regarding IR35 can be found at http://www.contractoruk.com/ir35/ and http://www.ipse.co.uk as IR35 is why the latter exists...

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#56

Post by Nursie »

framp wrote: post #52
Nursie wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business is a separate legal entity to you. A business bank account clearly demarks what is your money and what is not. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's a requirement to work with a lot of companies, if not a legal requirement for working with a ltd company. Business bank accounts can be had for free - most contractor-friendly accountants have an arrangement with Cater-Allen, for instance.

It's not a legal requirement and they're certainly not free AFAIK. It is a requirement for partecipating in certain contests (eg: Microsoft had a program for investing in indie games company and they required to use a business account entitled to the company) but I still haven't heard such requirement from a client.

>> It's not a legal requirement

I'd be surprised if it wasn't a requirement with many clients though, it shows a level of professionalism.

>> and they're certainly not free AFAIK.

You haven't looked very hard then...

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#57

Post by Nursie »

new299 wrote: post #53
Nursie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few more comments - Rate - Daily is good, hourly can also work. My current client will pre-authorise overpayment of a few hours a week if I work them. A little income boost if I want it. IR35 - The 'own equipment' thing is a guideline only, and I don't think you'll fall foul of IR35 for using their equipment, particularly as many places only allow their equipment to be used on their networks. There are other reason…

> Rate - Daily is good, hourly can also work. My current client will pre-authorise overpayment of a few hours a week if I work them. A little income boost if I want it. How do you manage your hours with a day rate? Is a work day 8 hours, or is it any day you worked for the company more than X hours? I've been trying to move to logging time and equating 1 day to 8 hours work. I find it fiddly to bill per day when perh…

Good to get this stuff sorted out ahead of time I guess.

Last year I was on a no-questions, no deviating day-rate. The consultancy I was working through wanted hourly accounting, I told them no and charged my rate per day or part of a day I worked for them, and based my working practices around 7.5 hour days. I put in the odd extra hour or ten here and there because I liked them and enjoyed the project, and they never quibbled about me clocking off early when the project didn't require a full day's attention. Quid pro quo I guess.

For this current contract the agent demands an account of hours worked and pays extra hours at day-rate/7.5, up until some maximum at which time I get to charge double, but the time has to be authorised by the end-client.

But it sounds like you're doing much smaller chunks of stuff for multiple clients? I tend to dedicate myself to one client at a time and work more or less full time on one project. Serial monogamy one might call it... I'm not an employee because I work on a project basis and then leave with no fuss :) I'm definitely a contractor, are you more of a freelancer?

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#58

Post by Nursie »

tommyd wrote: post #19
boothead wrote: post #3

Good advice, especially the bit about crunch. First time I contracted I let my accountant talk me into using their horrible spreadsheet. I couldn't make my self use it it was that bad and my accounts were a mess. Now my accountant (nimble jack) bundles freeagent (which when I looked into it was better than crunch and has an API) and keeping on top of things is much easier. One additional thing: If you're married make…

Other recommendations of accountants with decent online systems would be greatly appreciated. My current ones (Nixon Williams) seem fairly good as accountants, but the spreadsheet based expenses (and having to use email to take dividends, check profit/loss, etc) are getting quite annoying, and they want to charge extra to use their registered address rather than my own, which leaves a bit of a bad taste when Crunch i…

I've been using NW for about three years now and am deeply ambivalent about them for similar reasons...

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#60

Post by new299 »

Nursie wrote: post #57
new299 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rate - Daily is good, hourly can also work. My current client will pre-authorise overpayment of a few hours a week if I work them. A little income boost if I want it. How do you manage your hours with a day rate? Is a work day 8 hours, or is it any day you worked for the company more than X hours? I've been trying to move to logging time and equating 1 day to 8 hours work. I find it fiddly to bill per day when perh…

Good to get this stuff sorted out ahead of time I guess. Last year I was on a no-questions, no deviating day-rate. The consultancy I was working through wanted hourly accounting, I told them no and charged my rate per day or part of a day I worked for them, and based my working practices around 7.5 hour days. I put in the odd extra hour or ten here and there because I liked them and enjoyed the project, and they neve…

> But it sounds like you're doing much smaller chunks of stuff for multiple clients? I tend to dedicate myself to one client at a time and work more or less full time on one project. Serial monogamy one might call it... I'm not an employee because I work on a project basis and then leave with no fuss :) I'm definitely a contractor, are you more of a freelancer?

It's mostly one client at the moment, but not full time (10 days a month) and often based around when a new dataset becomes available to analyse. I work in Biotech and not strictly software development, so it's a slightly different model I guess.

It's also partly my fault, sometimes life gets in the way or I run out of steam after 4 or 5 hours staring at a dataset.

For contracting I'd ideally like to have a few clients and move between projects.

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