Parasol putting up monthly fees from 5th Oct

[MPwannadecentincome]

Time to get off my backside and go ltd co....

Okay, there's no easy way of saying this - in two weeks time we're having to bring our monthly management fee into line with our weekly fee and remove the discount for those of our much valued employees like yourself who currently pay monthly.

New monthly management fee of £119.50 from Oct 5th
This is our first monthly price increase in 18 months and is, of course, still tax deductible. To basic rate taxpayers, the actual cost is from £73.10 per month and to higher rate taxpayers, it's from £51.91. Which, we hope you agree, is still not a bad price to pay for the services of the UK's favourite umbrella company.

Why have we done it?
To be honest, there are a number of reasons. We've recently made significant investments in our service, such as 24 hour call answering, an increase in insurance cover to £23m and loads of improvements to My Parasol. We also have a growing admin burden in 2009 as a result of changes to employment and tax legislation.

[Epiphone]

£120 a month! Jesus wept. Do they carry the tenners around to your house personally?

To me that reads as "Hi, we're putting the price up jsut cos we can. We've had to invest in our business and improve some stuff to remain competitive so we're gonna charge you for it. Here's some stuff about how we've taken on more staff. Don't expect to speak to anyone with any sense though, just bang your head against the wall as you call us. It'll save time".

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

To be fair they only made £2.6million in profits last year and only had £12mill in the bank. Must be tough get the ends to meet on that!

[Shimano105]

Apparently they paid someone £300k to make their site look like a social networking site.

Rather than foot the bill, it seems that they expect us (their customers that is) to.

I will be moving to a different arrangement as a result.

I suggest others do the same as, frankly, in a period of pay-cuts and rate-cuts they've got a bloody cheek!

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

Or maybe its an attempt to get more business for Clearsky accounting - now part of the Parasol "family"

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

My only query would be the cost of fees after tax that is shown - £51.91 is only 43% of £119.50 so surely that would mean that tax relief of 57% was being applied - or am I missing something

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

My only query would be the cost of fees after tax that is shown - £51.91 is only 43% of £119.50 so surely that would mean that tax relief of 57% was being applied - or am I missing something

Could it be NIC's?

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

Could it be NIC's?

Possibly but that does give a rather distorted view of the cost as NI contributions are only payable on earnings over £110 per week and this assumes a saving of £17 in NI costs on £119.50.

[MPwannadecentincome]

My only query would be the cost of fees after tax that is shown - £51.91 is only 43% of £119.50 so surely that would mean that tax relief of 57% was being applied - or am I missing something

ah so we are having the wool pulled over our eyes!

[MPwannadecentincome]

Or maybe its an attempt to get more business for Clearsky accounting - now part of the Parasol "family"

or to pay for the advertising on this site for clearsky