If you are contemplating working through an umbrella company, you will likely spend a large amount of time comparing your options. In doing so, you will almost certainly see advertisements from umbrella companies that claim to offer “90% plus take home pay”.

As a contractor seeking to maximise their earnings, 90% take home pay sounds like a dream come true – but unfortunately, these claims can quickly turn into a nightmare.

90% take home pay is never feasible

The idea of being able to keep 90% of what you earn may be tempting, but it can only be achieved under a very specific set of circumstances. Let’s crunch the numbers:

• The rate of tax is the rate that anyone earning above the tax-free personal allowance must pay by law.
• Everyone receives a tax-free personal allowance of £11,850.
• Anything earned after this amount is taxable. This means that anyone in full-time employment must pay tax, as a full 40-hour week at the national minimum wage exceeds the tax-free allowance threshold. If you work full time, you must pay tax.
• If you earn between £11,851 and £46,350, you will pay 20% of your taxable income in tax.
• If you earn between £46,351 and £150,000, you will pay 40% in tax.
• If you earn over £150,000, you will pay 45%.

Given the above, we can conclude that unless you are earning less than your personal allowance of £11,850, you must pay tax at a rate of 20%.

So how can you legally achieve a take home pay of 90% – which is just a 10% tax rate – with an umbrella company? You can’t. It’s illegal.

So why do companies advertise 90% take home pay?

There are two reasons an umbrella company may advertise a 90% take home pay, and neither are positive:

• They are advertising this rate with a caveat – i.e. you can achieve this rate if you earn less than your personal allowance. This isn’t technically a lie as it can be true, but if you work full-time, you will definitely earn over your personal allowance – so really, it’s just marketing spin that applies to only a tiny percentage of contractors.
• More worryingly, a 90% take home pay could indicate that the umbrella company are involved in a tax avoidance scheme. If this is the case, working through such a company could have catastrophic consequences for you in the future.

HMRC and tax avoidance

Tax avoidance schemes are always illegal.

If HMRC find that you owe money in unpaid taxes, they will issue a demand for payment. You can try to argue that you did not avoid tax – your umbrella company did – but HMRC have the power to demand you ‘pay now, dispute later’. Due to this, you would still need to pay the back-taxes even if it is the umbrella company who were at fault. You could then dispute this with HMRC and claim a refund, but only after you have settled the debt in full – and even then, there’s no guarantee that the appeal would be successful.

So what should you do instead?

• Ignore companies that claim to offer you 90% take home pay, as this cannot be legal. This point cannot be overstated enough; there is no such thing as a legal or permitted tax avoidance scheme – no matter what companies claim on their website!
• Look for an umbrella company that pays you via the PAYE system
• Check all monies received to ensure that you are paying the right rate of tax for your income.

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Designing a Kitchen Remodeling Project

Kitchen remodeling is an excellent way to make your home look better and more functional. Budget planning is essential if you are thinking about major renovations. You should try not to spend more than fifteen percent of the market value of your home on a renovation. Additionally, by using more of the existing space, you can reduce your remodeling costs up to 20%.

Budgeting

Budgeting for a wake forest kitchen remodel project is complicated. You should consider your income, savings, as well as the costs of materials. Others include the costs of financing the project, such as borrowing money or taking out a home equity loan. Although you may plan to skip the loan part, it’s still important to factor it in.

When you budget for a kitchen remodeling project, you should allocate certain percentages of the total budget to different categories. A good example of this is to allocate 30 percent to cabinets and countertops, 20 percent to appliances and 10 percent to materials, fixtures, and fittings. The rest of the budget should be set aside for any unforeseen expenses that may come up during the project.

Planning

Planning a kitchen remodel is the first step. There are many choices, such as a U-shaped design, single-wall or double-L designs. Design-build firms or general contractors can help you design your new kitchen. These companies are experts in kitchen remodeling. They can help you design the best layout for your home.

Professional contractors usually have a list and timeline for the remodeling process. Make a list of all the tasks that must be done before you hire a contractor. It will help keep everyone on track of the project. It is also important to choose flooring. This is a difficult step. Some professionals prefer to install flooring before installing cabinetry, while others prefer to save this decision for the final phase. Most contractors, however, make this decision on a project-by-project basis.

Prices

Costs of kitchen remodels can be determined by many factors. First, you need to consider the value of your house. The project shouldn’t cost more than 15% of your home’s total value. A $200k home would mean that a kitchen remodel should not cost more than $30,000. You also need to consider whether you have enough cash. Before you start the project, it is a good idea to determine which areas of your kitchen are most in need of work.

Remodeling a kitchen can be costly as it requires the demolition and reconstruction of the entire main structure. This requires changes in the layout, design, as well as styling. This investment should be planned carefully. You should also ensure that you are able to afford the highest quality items. You will see an increase in the value of your home if you invest in quality items.

Timeline

Before you begin a kitchen renovation, you need to plan your timeline. A typical kitchen remodel will take anywhere from six weeks to four months. If you are working with exotic or custom materials or making significant structural changes, this timeframe may be longer. You can always contact the contractor that you have chosen early to get an estimate of the project’s time frame.

Framing, pipes and wiring are the first steps in the construction phase of a remodeling project. Safety and health inspections are required after this. This can take some time because different inspectors have different schedules. Next comes the flooring and cabinet installation phases.

Do I require search engine marketing?
Many people are skeptical regarding search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) companies. They presume that the efforts presented by online marketing are useless. Sadly,the old standby “if you construct it they will come” does not use to the Internet world.

If you were to open a storefront would not you acquire an indication to hang out front? Search engine marketing is done for the same factors. With 10s of billions of other websites out there it takes a little effort to guarantee that potential customers are able to find you when they require your services or products.

What types of search engine marketing are offered?
There are two main techniques when it pertains to ensuring your site is listed at the top of the SERPs (search engine results page). The very first is what is traditionally called search engine optimization (SEO) where the material and architecture of your site is altered to make your material more quickly readable by the search engine spiders. The other technique is to advertise your site with essential searches that will attract customers with the greatest rate of conversion. A conversion is defined as a visitor to your site that develops into a sales lead or a total sale.

Should I start with paid or organic search?
There are some significant differences between pay per click (PPC) and natural or organic search. When you spend marketing dollars it is typically described as paid search. When you alter the material of your site it is called natural or organic search optimization. A notable distinction is that with paid search,you have the high-end of marketing on a wide range of essential phrases and are able to track the outcomes on a specific basis. With natural search you will be forced to focus on a small set of well-trafficked essential phrases.

By beginning with paid search you will have the ability to collect important data concerning your most effective essential phrases. Utilizing this data you will have the ability to much better target essential phrases for a natural optimization campaign.

Sadly,a lot of search marketing companies still start with natural or organic search optimization. Typically this is done as it is more profitable for the search marketing agency. This is due to the fact that less money approaches the agency with a paid search campaign than with a natural search campaign. With a paid search campaign,the bulk of the budget is utilized to pay Google,Yahoo and MSN for marketing instead of for work within the agency itself. However,there is an exception to this guideline. If your service has a very specific niche market then the effort to optimize your essential phrases naturally is rather minimal. In this scenario it would make more sense to start and end with natural search engine optimization.

Finally,with paid search marketing you will only be paying for actual visitors to your site. Natural optimization requires that you invest funds in the prospect of sending out visitors to your site. For this reason,your financial investment in online marketing is much better safeguarded with a paid search campaign.

What are considerations in the essential phrase research study procedure?
An essential phrase is the actual search term that your consumer will enter into a search engine in the hopes of discovering a suitable site. Secret phrase research study with paid search marketing permits you to examine thousands of essential phrases at once. Natural search requires concentrating on a choose couple of before expending considerable resources. Preferably,once the essential phrases have actually been selected the performance will be recorded and evaluated for a click through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR). This data can then be compared with the competitiveness of the essential phrases to find to a lot of cost effective essential phrases. The cost of marketing on each essential phrase will differ based on the competitiveness of that phrase in that specific search engine.

How are the outcomes measured and reported?
Measuring the outcomes for paid marketing is a lot easier than for natural optimization. Still,it can be done for both. The majority of the time you will receive a report that shows the placement of your finest ranking essential phrases. However,they need to likewise be talking about concrete things like measurable traffic (visitors) and conversions. If your agency does not supply you with numerous reports you need to be asking why not.

The very best reporting will connect the marketing efforts straight to the goals of the site. If the site’s function is to create sales straight,the sales must have the ability to be tied straight back to the source of the traffic. Likewise,if the site generates leads then the lead needs to be traced back to the essential phrase and stemming search engine.

How will my site be sent to the search engines?
Be extremely careful when a search marketing agency suggests that they will send your site to search engines. The reality is that the only effort it takes to have your site indexed by the search engines is to have it exist in cyberspace. Online search engine regularly crawl lists of newly registered domains. For this reason,to be listed in the top search engines (Google,Yahoo and MSN) you need to not require to pay anybody.

If you look for a website submission program you will undoubtedly find companies providing to send your site to thousands of small search engines for a charge. Bear in mind that almost all of your search engine related traffic will originate from Google,Yahoo and MSN. Submitting to these other search engines is typically a waste of time and money. These types of mass submissions can likewise been seen as SEO spam and in a worst case situation could have your site got rid of completely from the significant search engines.

What is the procedure of your link building technique?
Link building is exceptionally essential to your ranking in Google. This is due to the fact that link building is the result of a 3rd celebration endorsement for your site instead of on-page efforts that you can perform yourself. Make sure that your search marketing agency supplies link building on a regular basis.

Some companies merely drive traffic to your site instead of place high quality links. They do this by developing their own websites and after that connecting to yours. While this will produce outcomes for your search marketing campaign,itis very important to keep in mind that your success is riding on the shoulders of a website in complete control of your SEO agency. If you select to stop your relationship,your site ranking will fall exceptionally quickly and you will be beginning over. An easy method to avoid this is to request a backlink report to be included in your routine reporting portfolio.

Have any of your clients every been blacklisted?
There are a group of search engine optimization techniques that are high risk and can lead to charges being offered by the significant search engines which include elimination from their index completely. While it is not impossible to recover from this scenario,it would be more suitable to never be positioned there in the very first place.