What are you hiding?!?

By Rob Crossland, chief executive at Optionis Group, home of Parasol & ClearSky Contractor Accounting

I am angry. I’ve just had one of those "Do you want to take home up to 90% of your earnings?" emails from one of the numerous "compliant" tax efficient solutions companies.

The email claims the usual stuff; safe, UK's premier solution, compliant and you can choose from up to 10 solutions! 

Unsurprisingly the "website" is a form collection tool, hosted on GoDaddy and with no relevant company information, not one of the statutory conditions met.

There is of course a weak disclaimer, and it is clearly a lead farming tool. It's pretty simple to discover which media company is behind it, and therefore where that same organisation is based. Seemingly not in the UK, so no surprise there either.

A quick check on the contact phone number and a couple more of these lead farming sites appear. So we have no idea where the leads go to, we have none of the statutory UK information requirements met and yet it all purports to be a UK-based, compliant solution.

You would have to be mad / not bothered about the consequences to follow this path!

I am angry because it's now 2015, and our tax authorities still seem powerless to stop this abuse. At the same time, they want to scrutinise the ability of a genuine employee to claim for genuine expenses whilst working on a professional assignment.

I have written and spoken many times on this topic, and I welcome scrutiny to ensure that vulnerable workers are not exploited. It's just a tad annoying that, whilst we focus on creating truly compliant services, the cowboys continue to erode the good work that many do.

It's been like this since 2001, but I have always maintained that in the long run, being safe and steady WILL win the race.

Some people will gravitate towards extravagant claims, but I remain confident that for the good of the UK economy, the 21st century professional employment organisation will endure and thrive on ethical and transparent principles.

Oi, education! Wake up and smell the flexible coffee

By Rob Crossland, chief executive at at Optionis Group, home of Parasol & ClearSky Contractor Accounting

I have had some interesting conversations this week, one of which centred around a mature professional starting his contracting career and his children completing university. We concluded that the education system knows very little about the way of work in the 21st century. Of course this is a sweeping generic statement, and there will be pockets of knowledge, but otherwise I believe it's fair.

The ONS reported in the summer that "self employment" had risen to its highest level in 40 years, and now accounts for almost 15% of the total working population. But how many of the people coming out of schools, colleges and uni see this as a viable option, or understand the segmentation within that number? Sure, plenty of universities run entrepreneurial-focused courses, but I think we need to examine the overall concept of self employment and flexible working as options for those leaving education.

We at Optionis believe that the prospect of gaining experience is a powerful factor in our successful apprenticeship programme. Gaining experience through the more robust forms of self employment can be an excellent way of building that CV. Sure, working part time in a pub is better than doing nothing, but I believe that the education system needs more focus on work and experience before it churns out qualified people without a wider appreciation of the way of work in these times.

The "system" needs to balance between the good work it teaches on entrepreneurial principles, and the opportunity to gain valuable outcomes based experience through working as a freelancer, contractor or similar modes of operation. I guess I would say this but the modern, compliant umbrella company is a safe, structured home and also provides the opportunity to work on brands and projects that otherwise might be difficult to reach. I am not advocating forced self employment, and there are some risks, but much of that thinking comes from a previous time and is not reflective of current good practice.

Flexible working (the ability to work on a variety of projects / tasks for a variety of clients at various locations, and not the looking-at-Google-from-your-bed form of flexible working) is here to stay and we will continue to try and educate the educators on these principles.

It's up to us all in the contingent / professional workforce space to spread the gospel.