Corona Virus main thread

[Mark .Y. 351]

9 minutes ago, Aggy said:

Very back of a fag packet stuff here (and I’m not an accountant and haven’t got any experience of the dividend route) but I reckon if you had 65k going through either PAYE or going through your company and being paid to you as dividends you’d end up with:

Dividend route : 12,350 corporation tax, and 4,461.25 dividend tax. Total tax = 16,811.25 and take home = 48,188.75

PAYE route = 13,500 income tax and 5,160 national insurance. Total tax and NI = 18,660, take home = 46,340.

The company could probably put through some expenses to reduce corporation tax exposure (although reducing profit for dividends?) , but the shareholder isn’t getting any employer pension contribution for instance. If the PAYE employee is putting in a pension contribution pre-tax, and also getting an employer contribution on top, then in the long run I doubt there’s that much difference either in ultimate tax paid or take home + pension pot. If the ltd company is paying a salary of c.10k and the rest in dividends I can’t be bothered to work it out but doubt it changes too much. 

Well, it is crucial that you pay yourself a salary of, say £12,000pa, which allows you to use up your personal allowance and hence saves you £2,400 of basic rate tax.  

[T 190]

Alternatively to the UK shambolic track and trace approach  the UK could have set up  trained health professionals supported by medical students months ago as elsewhere did. Why on earth doesn’t Boris pick up the phone admit he is totally out of his depth and ask someone from another country who is intelligent and competent how to do it. 
 

At what point do people grasp that the current UK government was elected on their ability to distort the truth and manipulate the public. Some of them are under effective continued house arrest because of the government inability to get to grips with this and they still can’t grasp they’ve put in place a group of incompetent liars to lead them. 

[BigFish 1,986]

26 minutes ago, Aggy said:

Very back of a fag packet stuff here (and I’m not an accountant and haven’t got any experience of the dividend route) but I reckon if you had 65k going through either PAYE or going through your company and being paid to you as dividends you’d end up with:

Dividend route : 12,350 corporation tax, and 4,461.25 dividend tax. Total tax = 16,811.25 and take home = 48,188.75

PAYE route = 13,500 income tax and 5,160 national insurance. Total tax and NI = 18,660, take home = 46,340.

The company could probably put through some expenses to reduce corporation tax exposure (although reducing profit for dividends?) , but the shareholder isn’t getting any employer pension contribution for instance. If the PAYE employee is putting in a pension contribution pre-tax, and also getting an employer contribution on top, then in the long run I doubt there’s that much difference either in ultimate tax paid or take home + pension pot. If the ltd company is paying a salary of c.10k and the rest in dividends I can’t be bothered to work it out but doubt it changes too much. 

Ok, with the caveat that I am not an accountant, I can't be arsed to do the calculations and everyones tax affairs are different lets paly about how this persons affairs might work......

Income - 65k

Pay yoursself £8, 788 (the NI threshold) (Company income now c£56k, Tax free income c£9k)

Wife/husband/someone else doesn't pay tax, make them a partner

Pay them £8788 (Company Income now c£47k, Tax free income £17.5k)

Now travel to work at 45p a mile, parking, lunches etc are expenses. So perhaps the work 5 days a week for 46 weeks with a round trip of 20 miles a day and spend £5 a day on lunch

Pay them another c£4.5k (Company income now c£43k, Tax free amount c £22k)

Then there is a whole host of other stuff that can be expenses e.g. £300 for entertaining(!), £208 for use of the home as a office, computers, phones, broadband etc etc

Pay them another two grand (Company income now c£43k, Tax free amount c£24k)

Let's slip £10k each into the pension pot

Company income c£23k, Tax free amount c£24k, Pension c£20k

Corporation Tax £4k, Dividends Tax is now c£1k, Income is £40k, and £20k went into the pension.

So if @Aggy's numbers are right the total tax is £5k rather than £18k.

This is just an illustration, so don't pick apart the numbers too much.

 

 

 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

So today's briefing was to tell something we already knew. Professional sport is back on soon. Then apart from Professor Van Tam's very carefully worded concession about easing lockdown restrictions, it was another day of avoiding questions.

[BigFish 1,986]

53 minutes ago, Mark .Y. said:

Well, it is crucial that you pay yourself a salary of, say £12,000pa, which allows you to use up your personal allowance and hence saves you £2,400 of basic rate tax.  

Not right. This would accrue both employer and employee NI contributions, the threshold is £8,788.......but you can pay that to as many non-taxpayer partners as you like.

These people arn't paying income tax od NI

[BigFish 1,986]

13 minutes ago, T said:

Alternatively to the UK shambolic track and trace approach  the UK could have set up  trained health professionals supported by medical students months ago as elsewhere did.

That would require this country NOT to be led by a lying, incompetent bag of wind and a collection of useless sycophants.

[Van wink 2,994]

3 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

So today's briefing was to tell something we already knew. Professional sport is back on soon. Then apart from Professor Van Tam's very carefully worded concession about easing lockdown restrictions, it was another day of avoiding questions.

I thought it was the best one for ages to be honest KG.

We needed the message to get across about the virus being still there and only just under control, how easy it would be for the epidemic to take off again,  risks associated with the new measures, why people need to comply.

 

 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

120+K tests today. Will there be a magic surge to hit Boris's 200K target. Don't be surprised to see a spike in testing for one day only.

[T 190]

The effective tax rate paid by private equity houses on their income is typically Zero. Studies have shown people aren’t really bothered about people  doing well and don’t support higher rates of tax for the rich. The. Just want the rich to pay the dame effective rate of tax as everyone else that is all without all the tax avoidance loop holes. Seems fair enough to me. 

[Aggy 750]

1 hour ago, Indy said:

Don’t forget you don’t get company Pension contributions by owning your own company, then bills like rent, insurance, rates, all come from profits so even before you start that 65k is actually down by 7k.

Yep, mentioned employer contrib in original post.  The rest you mention would reduces your corporation tax but also profit, so less potential dividend in the first place. I doubt many one man band contractors will pay business rates or rent, which is why I didn’t include them - but if it’s a slightly larger business, you’re right and you’d also be making employer NI contributions if you had any employees, so the overall tax paid one way or another would be higher. But figures I used were just on the basis that this was a one man ltd company set up as (basically) an alternative to being directly on the PAYE system.

1 hour ago, Mark .Y. said:

Well, it is crucial that you pay yourself a salary of, say £12,000pa, which allows you to use up your personal allowance and hence saves you £2,400 of basic rate tax.  

Yes it’s a bit more of a swing. If you paid yourself 12,500 to max out your personal allowance (and not factoring in employee or employer pension contributions), I make it:

Tax and Ni (Dividend tax, Employer and employee NI contributions and corporation tax) = 11,915

Take home = 53,085.

Against - if pure PAYE - 18,660 tax and 46,340 take home. So it’s about a 7k swing. Although if you factor in any employer pension contributions and pre-tax employee pension deductions, it’s probably nearer a 4-5k swing I would imagine.

[Mark .Y. 351]

12 minutes ago, BigFish said:

Not right. This would accrue both employer and employee NI contributions, the threshold is £8,788.......but you can pay that to as many non-taxpayer partners as you like.

These people arn't paying income tax od NI

Well, it is true that it would involve employee NI contributions.

But the small business exemption for employers means that the type of person we are talking about ie single person who sets up as a limited company instead of as a sole trader will likely not pay employer NI contributions, will only be employee contributions. So I think, in most cases, it is still good to use up your personal income tax allowance, which is now £12,500pa

 

[Aggy 750]

24 minutes ago, BigFish said:

Ok, with the caveat that I am not an accountant, I can't be arsed to do the calculations and everyones tax affairs are different lets paly about how this persons affairs might work......

Income - 65k

Pay yoursself £8, 788 (the NI threshold) (Company income now c£56k, Tax free income c£9k)

Wife/husband/someone else doesn't pay tax, make them a partner

Pay them £8788 (Company Income now c£47k, Tax free income £17.5k)

Now travel to work at 45p a mile, parking, lunches etc are expenses. So perhaps the work 5 days a week for 46 weeks with a round trip of 20 miles a day and spend £5 a day on lunch

Pay them another c£4.5k (Company income now c£43k, Tax free amount c £22k)

Then there is a whole host of other stuff that can be expenses e.g. £300 for entertaining(!), £208 for use of the home as a office, computers, phones, broadband etc etc

Pay them another two grand (Company income now c£43k, Tax free amount c£24k)

Let's slip £10k each into the pension pot

Company income c£23k, Tax free amount c£24k, Pension c£20k

Corporation Tax £4k, Dividends Tax is now c£1k, Income is £40k, and £20k went into the pension.

So if @Aggy's numbers are right the total tax is £5k rather than £18k.

This is just an illustration, so don't pick apart the numbers too much.

 

 

 

Yep, you’re right (I haven’t checked the numbers but look about right) - the expenses are a big one and if you bring a second person in then likewise. I hadn’t factored either of those in, but you certainly don’t get that flexibility if you’re on PAYE.

I vaguely recall something on the radio saying the government was looking at bringing something in to stop people using ltd companies when in reality they are normal employees, but I think it had been pushed back for the nth time. That was a while back so not sure if anything has changed since. 
 

Edit: p.s. absolutely no guarantee my numbers were right in the first place as I was working off what I could find from a quick google!

Edited May 30, 2020 by Aggy

[BigFish 1,986]

2 minutes ago, Mark .Y. said:

Well, it is true that it would involve employee NI contributions.

But the small business exemption for employers means that the type of person we are talking about ie single person who sets up as a limited company instead of as a sole trader will likely not pay employer NI contributions, will only be employee contributions. So I think, in most cases, it is still good to use up your personal income tax allowance, which is now £12,500pa

 

You are clearly an idiot who believes they know better than those that do

[T 190]

Truth is the UK is not in a position to lift restrictions because it has been slow to implement restrictions at the start and is months behind on implementing an effective track and trace scheme which is absolutely critical.
 

A lot of cases can be traced back to a few places and events though so 48pc of the cases in Germany have been traced back to one ski resort in Austria !  80 pc of cases come from 20pc of those infected. so test and trace early and potentially isolated early everyone from a hotspot even  before they are tested and virologists are confident that you can control this without a vaccine.

It is the mass events and lots of people in one place that spread this. Unfortunately the UK still hasn’t got the systems in place to do this. Why on earth only start setting this up now?  I fully appreciate that you need to get the number of cases down to a few hundred a day by general restrictions for track and trace to be effective which the UK hasn’t achieved yet but why not set up track and trace months ago and then you would have a much more capable system already in place now. But then these are the people who have no agreed Brexit  plan in place after 4 years so I guess you can’t expect them to have an effective track and trace scheme in place after a few months. 

[Aggy 750]

17 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

120+K tests today. Will there be a magic surge to hit Boris's 200K target. Don't be surprised to see a spike in testing for one day only.

Is that 120k in the post or actually carried out? Have we had any proper figures recently on how many have actually been done?

A few people have mentioned the prediction that only 7 per cent of the population have caught it (as opposed to higher predictions). I wonder how the 7 per cent figure was reached - if it’s based on tests in the post that haven’t actually been done and returned then it might skew the stats a bit.

[Mark .Y. 351]

1 minute ago, BigFish said:

You are clearly an idiot who believes they know better than those that do

You are clearly the idiot.

You stated that employer NI contributions would be payable........... I suggested that is very unlikely for the situation we are talking about......... show me why they are

[BigFish 1,986]

3 minutes ago, Aggy said:

Yep, you’re right (I haven’t checked the numbers but look about right) - the expenses are a big one and if you bring a second person in then likewise. I hadn’t factored either of those in, but you certainly don’t get that flexibility if you’re on PAYE.

I vaguely recall something on the radio saying the government was looking at bringing something in to stop people using ltd companies when in reality they are normal employees, but I think it had been pushed back for the nth time. That was a while back so not sure if anything has changed since. 

Yes @Aggy, that is the IR35 regulation. It already applies in the public sector but Sunak postponed its impelemention in the private sector for this year because of Covid.

[Aggy 750]

1 minute ago, BigFish said:

Yes @Aggy, that is the IR35 regulation. It already applies in the public sector but Sunak postponed its impelemention in the private sector for this year because of Covid.

Interesting. I can see the logic behind it being in place in the public sector  - you don’t want individuals to be benefiting from public money if they ought to be on PAYE and paying higher tax.

But at the same time, I can’t help but think it’s another example of the public sector being shot in the foot if it’s allowed in the private sector still. I imagine public sector employers can probably pay less in the first place and then if, as the ‘employee’, you can use a scheme that means less tax at a private sector employer, where are the best employees going to go? 

[BigFish 1,986]

1 minute ago, Mark .Y. said:

You are clearly the idiot.

You stated that employer NI contributions would be payable........... I suggested that is very unlikely for the situation we are talking about......... show me why they are

Classic response from the dimmest light bulb on the South Coast.

I explained in detail above how a Personal Services Company (google it Einstein) would typically structure their accounts to minimise the tax liability. Read it and try and understand. That is why people pay accountants rather than rely on football message boards.

[Creative Midfielder 1,985]

12 minutes ago, T said:

Alternatively to the UK shambolic track and trace approach  the UK could have set up  trained health professionals supported by medical students months ago as elsewhere did. Why on earth doesn’t Boris pick up the phone admit he is totally out of his depth and ask someone from another country who is intelligent and competent how to do it. 
 

At what point do people grasp that the current UK government was elected on their ability to distort the truth and manipulate the public. Some of them are under effective continued house arrest because of the government inability to get to grips with this and they still can’t grasp they’ve put in place a group of incompetent liars to lead them. 

All of this is true but I would also point out that Johnson didn't even have to pick up the phone to someone abroad to find out how to track and trace properly - he could simply have listened to the advice and offers of help from local authorities in this country. It is already standard practice in local authorities and the NHS in certain areas of their public health provision, and the government were advised that local authorities were the best placed to implement track and trace and alreadly had thousands of existing trained and experienced staff. Know a couple of people round here that work for the local authority and had already voluntered to be seconded onto this but as ever the government, driven by ideology (and stupidity) shelled out hundreds of millions to private sector companies who have no knowledge or experience of the field and have unsurprisingly screwed things up big time.

I think describing this government as incompetent just doesn't do it justice any more, what we are seeing is example after example of flat out stupidity and whilst it does still seem to go over many people's heads I do think one benefit of the Cummings scandal is that a lot more people are starting to question the government rather than simply accepting their nonsense at face value.

[BigFish 1,986]

4 minutes ago, Aggy said:

Interesting. I can see the logic behind it being in place in the public sector  - you don’t want individuals to be benefiting from public money if they ought to be on PAYE and paying higher tax.

But at the same time, I can’t help but think it’s another example of the public sector being shot in the foot if it’s allowed in the private sector still. I imagine public sector employers can probably pay less in the first place and then if, as the ‘employee’, you can use a scheme that means less tax at a private sector employer, where are the best employees going to go? 

True, I worked for a public body when it was implemented in the public sector. The result was all the contractors immediately downed tools and walked off site, never to return.

[TIL 1010 4,718]

There are more fag packet accountants around than Nutty ever imagined.

[Mark .Y. 351]

5 minutes ago, BigFish said:

Classic response from the dimmest light bulb on the South Coast.

I explained in detail above how a Personal Services Company (google it Einstein) would typically structure their accounts to minimise the tax liability. Read it and try and understand. That is why people pay accountants rather than rely on football message boards.

Classic response from somebody who considers themself a "bigfish" and writes in big green font hoping that everybody will realise how important he is.

Originally we were not talking about the IR35 type PSC cases. We were talking about the "simple joe" type guy who needs to decide whether to be a sole trader or set up a limited company.

I think you're a little annoyed with me aren't you......... because you posted up that twitter quote about the death rate earlier and I set it straight. I didn't expect you to refer back to it and say something along the lines of "ah, yes, hadn't thought of that" - because that doesn't fit with your agenda does it.   

[T 190]

5 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

All of this is true but I would also point out that Johnson didn't even have to pick up the phone to someone abroad to find out how to track and trace properly - he could simply have listened to the advice and offers of help from local authorities in this country. It is already standard practice in local authorities and the NHS in certain areas of their public health provision, and the government were advised that local authorities were the best placed to implement track and trace and alreadly had thousands of existing trained and experienced staff. Know a couple of people round here that work for the local authority and had already voluntered to be seconded onto this but as ever the government, driven by ideology (and stupidity) shelled out hundreds of millions to private sector companies who have no knowledge or experience of the field and have unsurprisingly screwed things up big time.

I think describing this government as incompetent just doesn't do it justice any more, what we are seeing is example after example of flat out stupidity and whilst it does still seem to go over many people's heads I do think one benefit of the Cummings scandal is that a lot more people are starting to question the government rather than simply accepting their nonsense at face value.

Agreed. The UK had private testing capacity and health authorities track and trace capabilities. The German authorities used and ramped up these existing capabilities. The UK decided not to. The Ventilatoren were another classic example. why not work with those who knew what they were doing rather than brexiteer mucky mates with vacuum cleaners. 
 

It is a a failure of governance and leadership. It keeps coming back to Boris and his cronies were put in place  on their Brexit ideology rather than their competence. Boris and Cummings are dismissive of knowledge and experience and expertise. It was the criteria for Brexit and it is the same approach to the pandemic. Sheep led by fools. The UK has so many good innate qualities that are just being wasted because of the obsession with idealoogy over pragmatism. 

[Barbe bleu 812]

15 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

It is already standard practice in local authorities and the NHS in certain areas of their public health provision, and the government were advised that local authorities were the best placed to implement track and trace and alreadly had thousands of existing trained and experienced staff. Know a couple of people round here that work for the local authority and had already voluntered to be seconded onto this but as ever the government, driven by ideology (and stupidity) shelled out hundreds of millions to private sector companies who have no knowledge or experience of the field and have unsurprisingly screwed things up big time.

Can we look at this in a little more detail please?

I think that most of us will agree that we have had contact tracing mechanism set out for decades and people trained to do it.  I think all sensible.people realise that we put the system into action in the early days of covid.

I had assumed that when we are talking of a 'system' being set up I assumed a bigger scale, integrated and uniform system based on or running alongside what usually happens.

Are you saying that people whose day job involves contact tracing other  diseases are not already on covid watch?

[BigFish 1,986]

16 minutes ago, Mark .Y. said:

Classic response from somebody who considers themself a "bigfish" and writes in big green font hoping that everybody will realise how important he is.

Originally we were not talking about the IR35 type PSC cases. We were talking about the "simple joe" type guy who needs to decide whether to be a sole trader or set up a limited company.

I think you're a little annoyed with me aren't you......... because you posted up that twitter quote about the death rate earlier and I set it straight. I didn't expect you to refer back to it and say something along the lines of "ah, yes, hadn't thought of that" - because that doesn't fit with your agenda does it.   

Actually I ignored your previous post because it was a ridiculous attempt by someone whose knowledge of immunology was obviously at the same level as you are demonstrating your knowledge of the UK tax system is. Your post didn't disprove the argument, it didn't even engage with or understand it.

Devi Sridhar is a professor and Chair of Global Public Health, you are just some bloke on a football message board. I know whose opinion I trust.

Edited May 30, 2020 by BigFish

[Barbe bleu 812]

8 minutes ago, T said:

 The German authorities used and ramped up these existing capabilities...
 

 It keeps coming back to Boris and his cronies were put in place  on their Brexit ideology rather than their competence. 

We take these two things as read in all your posts. You could probably leave them out 

[Mark .Y. 351]

Just now, BigFish said:

Actually I ignored your previous post because it was a ridiculous attempt by someone whose knowledge of immunology was obviously at the same level as you are demonstrate your knowledge of the UK tax system is. Your post didn't disprove the argument, it didn't even engage with or understand it.

Devi Sridhar is a professor and Chair of Global Public Health, you are just some bloke on a football message board. I know whose opinion I trust.

So you dispute the actual numbers I put up do you ?

She was wong was't she.......... I don't care who she is, she chose to use the numbers to suit her personal viewpoint or she possibly didn't realise she'd made an error.

That's the truth isn't it ? You don't have to trust anybody's opinion at all, just look at the numbers, think for yourself, you don't need to be a sheep............ then explain to me where I have gone wrong...... 

[Herman 9,710]

1 hour ago, keelansgrandad said:

So today's briefing was to tell something we already knew. Professional sport is back on soon. Then apart from Professor Van Tam's very carefully worded concession about easing lockdown restrictions, it was another day of avoiding questions.

This is good though.

 

[sgncfc 1,221]

2 minutes ago, Herman said:

This is good though.

 

I suspect that Prof Van-Tam won't be appearing in many more press conferences...…...last thing Boris needs is an academic with an opinion.