Tax question - is it pointless?

[BQF]

At this time of year, when I have just paid my enormous Corp Tax bill, my personal tax swallows all my available funds, and there are a raft of stories of multi-nationals paying 20p of tax of £100Bn of turnover, I start to think about ways of paying less tax.....

All these '90% take home' fellas seem to be very risky - in any case most contracts require a Limited company in my field (FS, Risk and Reg).

Has anyone used a fancy 'Amazon' style tax arrangement with their Limited Co - basing it somewhere low tax like Luxembourg/Cayman Islands and then through a fiendishly complex loan/investment structure exporting their UK contract earnings to the overseas parent?

Or does such a wheeze not exist? Am I doomed to pay enormous tax bills forever?

[northernladuk]

Erm, how can your taxes swallow your available funds. That doesn't make sense....

Quick answer to your question would be no. Wouldn't we all be doing it and it would be standard process if there were?

[jamesbrown]

Don't be ridiculous.

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

Don't be ridiculous.

This.

And I think you'll find that the sort of companies you are talking about are multi-nationals who have offices all over the world and are therefore able to take advantage of tax planning and investment schemes that would not be available to, for instance, a one man band in Chingford

[Forbes Young]

At this time of year, when I have just paid my enormous Corp Tax bill, my personal tax swallows all my available funds, and there are a raft of stories of multi-nationals paying 20p of tax of £100Bn of turnover, I start to think about ways of paying less tax.....

All these '90% take home' fellas seem to be very risky - in any case most contracts require a Limited company in my field (FS, Risk and Reg).

Has anyone used a fancy 'Amazon' style tax arrangement with their Limited Co - basing it somewhere low tax like Luxembourg/Cayman Islands and then through a fiendishly complex loan/investment structure exporting their UK contract earnings to the overseas parent?

Or does such a wheeze not exist? Am I doomed to pay enormous tax bills forever?

No wheezes exist in my opinion which aren't tax evasion. To summarise, to form a limited company and operate outside of IR35 is the best way to maximise your take home remuneration, whether the take-home total after tax is 80%, 75% or 70%. This all depends on how much income your company generates and how many expenses the company incurs and the timing of your dividends.

We have had a few clients come across to us who have previously operated offshore schemes and have been found out by HMRC, asked to pay £000s in back tax owing and have been heavily fined. So beware!

Graeme Bennett ACMA MBA

[meridian]

Tax question - is it pointless?

[QUOTE=BQF;2051017]raft of stories of multi-nationals paying 20p of tax of £100Bn of turnover[\QUOTE]

And it's exactly this sort of mis-reporting and scaremongering that the papers have fooled you with.

Question: do you pay tax on your turnover, or your net profit?

[TykeMerc]

Or does such a wheeze not exist? Am I doomed to pay enormous tax bills forever?

That's correct you are doomed to pay massive tax bills forever, oh and a £1k fee for each letter in each ridiculous post here on CUK for that matter.

You claim to be a 5+ year contractor yet looking for massive corporation type scams and phoenixing seem entirely reasonable to you, those are mutually opposing situations except in the wildly thick or a certain type of posting account, I strongly suspect the latter. Trolling in the professional sections isn't clever.

[BlasterBates]

Companies that move their profits around do actually have offices and employees in these places.

Yes you can do the same, but you need an employee sitting in the Isle of Man, developing the software that you deliver and charging out on your UK company.

...and then you will witness a very frustrated HMRC official who can't do anything other than sign off on your tax return.

[stek]

At this time of year, when I have just paid my enormous Corp Tax bill, my personal tax swallows all my available funds, and there are a raft of stories of multi-nationals paying 20p of tax of £100Bn of turnover, I start to think about ways of paying less tax.....

All these '90% take home' fellas seem to be very risky - in any case most contracts require a Limited company in my field (FS, Risk and Reg).

Has anyone used a fancy 'Amazon' style tax arrangement with their Limited Co - basing it somewhere low tax like Luxembourg/Cayman Islands and then through a fiendishly complex loan/investment structure exporting their UK contract earnings to the overseas parent?

Or does such a wheeze not exist? Am I doomed to pay enormous tax bills forever?

You pay tax where the work is done, simples........

[BQF]

That's correct you are doomed to pay massive tax bills forever, oh and a £1k fee for each letter in each ridiculous post here on CUK for that matter.

You claim to be a 5+ year contractor yet looking for massive corporation type scams and phoenixing seem entirely reasonable to you, those are mutually opposing situations except in the wildly thick or a certain type of posting account, I strongly suspect the latter. Trolling in the professional sections isn't clever.

What exactly are you talking about? I'm not looking for 'massive corporation type scams' - I was simply interested to learn whether any contractors had employed geographical solutions to earning income. Seemed a relatively straightforward question to me - apologies if it seems ridiculous.