Business, Accountants, and 2008

This morning I went off to see an accountant. I’m considering going back to having my own limited company again (in the name of the business, for obvious reasons) and being far more in control of things. There’ve been a few negative experiences in 2007 with the umbrella company I’ve been using, and it seems to be time to take the next step and go back to having my own limited company.

The difference this time though is that I intend to run it all through an accountant, for the simple reason that I don’t want all the paperwork hassles. It seems like a good option to get an accountant to handle the tax paperwork, companies house bureaucracy, and self-assessment tax forms – and not least to make sure that it’s all done right, so that I don’t have to worry about it.

I’m not doing this because I want to try and avoid paying tax or anything – I’m doing it because I want to make sure I do pay the right amount (allbeit paying less than the 40% level) and not leave myself open to IR35, or to nastiness from tax audits and the like.

The visit went well, and I got some good information out of it. I’m going to sound out at least one more accountant as well, just or comparison purposes -there’s no sense in just going with the first person you talk to, after all. But from the information today well, it’s going to make sense to go this route – it’ll save me a whole bundle on tax, but also it looks (by my rough maths) like it’ll also work out cheaper on a monthly basis than the umbrella company has.

And that’s not taking into account the £*cough* they cost me on a disputed invoice too…