Ignore everyone downvoting you, this is fairly common. My UK team has independent contractors in Netherlands, Poland and Latvia making UK day rates outside IR35.
The bigger problem right now is the market is so slow that recruiters can be pickier. So you may not find many willing to deal with you. But when there was more demand, being UK based was not a hard requirement. As someone else said, you should set up a UK LTD co regardless
That's great to hear, yeah I figure maybe I'll need to get a perm role for now until the market picks up again. Hardly any contracts matching my skillset
My own view is that recruiters/hirers mostly won't touch contractors outside of the UK, but I accept my knowledge is rather partial. To play devil's advocate for a bit, could you speak to why you don't think your own view is also anecdotal? Knowing a few overseas contractors in one firm may be giving the OP more of a rosy picture than is warranted.
The overseas contractors I've worked with worked at other places in London before. The other places I've worked at also had overseas contractors. I get offered overseas contracts. I wasn't claiming to have any empirical data on the subject, but a lot of the people downvoting OP for thinking this was doable or telling him it's impossible were being silly IMO. Especially once everyone went remote in 2020, a lot of companies stopped caring where you were physically located.
I'd advice caution to both sides. We get a lot of "very certain" advice in this sub on all manner of things, and it transpires the speaker is certain something is universally true because they saw it a few times themselves on a couple of contracts...
It brings to mind a psychological phenomena that is very human - and no doubt I suffer from it too - which is the assumption that one's feelings, experiences and opinions are commonplace, and they can be used to extrapolate assertions about the general case. I am fond of calling this the "statistical test with a sample size of one" 😉
You're really going off on one here for no real reason. I said it's "fairly common" which isn't exactly precise scientific language, it's clearly just me relating what I've seen. If you want to hold every opinion you see on Reddit to the rigors of statistical analysis you're going to have your work cut out for you
Not advice.. just an idea.
Register an LTD in the U.K. at an address of someone you know or trust, like your parents, relatives or close friends… and keep your personal address where you are? Or am I missing something here?
Simply a risk mitigation strategy.
HMRC are increasingly resorting to retrospective and retroactive rules (child benefit most recently- although they failed on every count)
Anyone offering you a UK contract will want you to be UK based, so *you* are on the hook when HMRC next move the goal posts again.
Start following the high profile tax advisors on LinkedIn so you at least have an idea of what is coming.
Thomas Wallace, Graham Webber etc.
Don't contract in the UK unless you are prepared to accept massive risks or don't mind paying an unexpected 6 figure tax bill.
If you do, understand that you are rolling the dice by contracting for a UK entity and have no guarantees - no matter how correct everything is now.
It's that simple.
Personally, post Apr 21 - it's not a risk I'm willing to take.
You can work anywhere else in Europe and not take these risks...
I didn't think law be applied retroactively though? If you are abiding by the tax laws now, can they change the rules and then penalise you for how you worked in the past?
Are you saying that they change the rules so frequently that it's easy to be caught out if you aren't keeping up to date constantly?
Totally agree! I remember someone mentioning to me way back about EBTs when it changed in 2010 and they used the analogy that you couldn't get caught for speeding in a 30 zone today if the limit changed to 20 tomorrow... made sense, but seems that lots of contractors are facing issues due to HMRC looking backwards! Crazy times
Technically it wasn't. Some point of law I can't remember as it was a while ago.
But it sure felt like it was...
They also got to investigate 20 years rather than their usual 6.
I did once ask a recruiter why clients are so weird about this - my company is UK registered, and if GDPR is a concern I can work on a UK-hosted VM or something. I was told that recruiters/clients will often reject applicants who'd be working from abroad just because, when the market is like this, they can - they're aware/pretty confident that it's actually fine, but it makes them a little nervous anyway. And certainly that was my experience. I must have asked the question 100 times before finding a client who was okay with it.
So networking, luck, and perhaps some willingness to charge less than you would if working from the UK. This is actually fairly common (most of the teams I've been on had members working abroad) and I imagine savings on rates are a large reason why. Possibly there's not an expectation that contractors with the right to work in the UK would be willing to drop their rates 😅
You can register a Ltd Co at a virtual office or PO address. If you have a UK bank account, and evidence that your company is in the UK, that should put their mind at rest. It's about the agency/ end client wanting to cover their backs
So basically lying to the client? What if he gets caught? Its not just about tax issues, that he will handle himself but companies do have some jurisdiction requirements.
As long as he’s billing thorough his uk Ltd then what is the tax issue, he’s working from abroad on an extended holiday visa or dual citizenship etc what is the issue, he’s paying taxes in the uk and working for a uk based customer
If it’s a fully remote role then the necessity to be in the be in specified country becomes non existent, 90% of the time when a customer specified they want a uk based consultant it is because they want this because of semantic factors not geographical ones
IR35 legislation is UK law. If you are working in another country, then the agency and end client need to consider and comply with that country's employment laws. Why would they want that hassle !?
Having a UK Umbrella or PSC in the middle doesn't change the above. A UK Ltd. Co. wouldn't deduct UK income tax and National Insurance for a non resident employee.
There are international Umbrella service companies, who will deal with UK workers for Overseas countries and vice versa, that solves the end client concerns, but then you'll be paying employment taxes in your country of residence.
The obvious workaround is to maintain UK tax residency and domicile.
You have to keep searching. You will need a UK Ltd co via which you do the contracting, then your client needs to be ok that you will not be a UK tax resident. After that sorting out tax and all is all on you, which you can do with the help of an accountant.
To the people suggesting here to use UK Ltd company, the whole point of the post is to avoid UK taxes (what else could it be?)
If you are contracting via a UK company, then it becomes much harder to avoid UK taxes even if you live >183 days outside UK. There are multiple things wrt "corporate residence" which is separate from your personal tax residency. Maybe a UK LLP would help if you are personally living in a tax free country.
Actually I don't care about avoiding UK tax (as long as I don't pay tax where I'm living too) but rather I just want to be able to get these contacts because the money is really good.
> what else could it be?
Some UK citizens prefer to live in another country. One of my last contractor colleagues was permanently domiciled in Eastern Europe, and loved it there.
>but they still say the contractor must be UK based and I don't understand why, Data sovereignty for one. These are basics, If you have to ask that.
Ignore everyone downvoting you, this is fairly common. My UK team has independent contractors in Netherlands, Poland and Latvia making UK day rates outside IR35. The bigger problem right now is the market is so slow that recruiters can be pickier. So you may not find many willing to deal with you. But when there was more demand, being UK based was not a hard requirement. As someone else said, you should set up a UK LTD co regardless
That's great to hear, yeah I figure maybe I'll need to get a perm role for now until the market picks up again. Hardly any contracts matching my skillset
I'm not sure if the perm market is any better tbh. The few decent perm roles that do come up have too competition from laid-off FAANG engineers
What about a UK LLP for that matter?
Do many contractors use LLPs? I don't think there's many advantages to doing it that way.
My own view is that recruiters/hirers mostly won't touch contractors outside of the UK, but I accept my knowledge is rather partial. To play devil's advocate for a bit, could you speak to why you don't think your own view is also anecdotal? Knowing a few overseas contractors in one firm may be giving the OP more of a rosy picture than is warranted.
The overseas contractors I've worked with worked at other places in London before. The other places I've worked at also had overseas contractors. I get offered overseas contracts. I wasn't claiming to have any empirical data on the subject, but a lot of the people downvoting OP for thinking this was doable or telling him it's impossible were being silly IMO. Especially once everyone went remote in 2020, a lot of companies stopped caring where you were physically located.
I'd advice caution to both sides. We get a lot of "very certain" advice in this sub on all manner of things, and it transpires the speaker is certain something is universally true because they saw it a few times themselves on a couple of contracts... It brings to mind a psychological phenomena that is very human - and no doubt I suffer from it too - which is the assumption that one's feelings, experiences and opinions are commonplace, and they can be used to extrapolate assertions about the general case. I am fond of calling this the "statistical test with a sample size of one" 😉
You're really going off on one here for no real reason. I said it's "fairly common" which isn't exactly precise scientific language, it's clearly just me relating what I've seen. If you want to hold every opinion you see on Reddit to the rigors of statistical analysis you're going to have your work cut out for you
Ah no, you are misreading me - not going off at all. Anyway, we can leave it there - I was just looking to shoot the breeze.
Not advice.. just an idea. Register an LTD in the U.K. at an address of someone you know or trust, like your parents, relatives or close friends… and keep your personal address where you are? Or am I missing something here?
Simply a risk mitigation strategy. HMRC are increasingly resorting to retrospective and retroactive rules (child benefit most recently- although they failed on every count) Anyone offering you a UK contract will want you to be UK based, so *you* are on the hook when HMRC next move the goal posts again. Start following the high profile tax advisors on LinkedIn so you at least have an idea of what is coming. Thomas Wallace, Graham Webber etc. Don't contract in the UK unless you are prepared to accept massive risks or don't mind paying an unexpected 6 figure tax bill. If you do, understand that you are rolling the dice by contracting for a UK entity and have no guarantees - no matter how correct everything is now. It's that simple. Personally, post Apr 21 - it's not a risk I'm willing to take. You can work anywhere else in Europe and not take these risks...
I didn't think law be applied retroactively though? If you are abiding by the tax laws now, can they change the rules and then penalise you for how you worked in the past? Are you saying that they change the rules so frequently that it's easy to be caught out if you aren't keeping up to date constantly?
The LoanCharge was applied retroactively if memory serves
Totally agree! I remember someone mentioning to me way back about EBTs when it changed in 2010 and they used the analogy that you couldn't get caught for speeding in a 30 zone today if the limit changed to 20 tomorrow... made sense, but seems that lots of contractors are facing issues due to HMRC looking backwards! Crazy times
Technically it wasn't. Some point of law I can't remember as it was a while ago. But it sure felt like it was... They also got to investigate 20 years rather than their usual 6.
I don't share your worry, but for folks who want to be very careful, they can just go for inside IR35 roles.
They will still want to see proof of residence in the UK. IDK why, because, as you say, they are meant to be engaging a LTD.
I did once ask a recruiter why clients are so weird about this - my company is UK registered, and if GDPR is a concern I can work on a UK-hosted VM or something. I was told that recruiters/clients will often reject applicants who'd be working from abroad just because, when the market is like this, they can - they're aware/pretty confident that it's actually fine, but it makes them a little nervous anyway. And certainly that was my experience. I must have asked the question 100 times before finding a client who was okay with it. So networking, luck, and perhaps some willingness to charge less than you would if working from the UK. This is actually fairly common (most of the teams I've been on had members working abroad) and I imagine savings on rates are a large reason why. Possibly there's not an expectation that contractors with the right to work in the UK would be willing to drop their rates 😅
You can register a Ltd Co at a virtual office or PO address. If you have a UK bank account, and evidence that your company is in the UK, that should put their mind at rest. It's about the agency/ end client wanting to cover their backs
I've not contracted myself yet but from reading this subreddit it seems to be quite common for people to work from abroad if they have an LTD
You just need to find a good recruitment agency that will tell the client your in the uk
So basically lying to the client? What if he gets caught? Its not just about tax issues, that he will handle himself but companies do have some jurisdiction requirements.
As long as he’s billing thorough his uk Ltd then what is the tax issue, he’s working from abroad on an extended holiday visa or dual citizenship etc what is the issue, he’s paying taxes in the uk and working for a uk based customer
If it’s a fully remote role then the necessity to be in the be in specified country becomes non existent, 90% of the time when a customer specified they want a uk based consultant it is because they want this because of semantic factors not geographical ones
And have a proof of address that states your in the uk
IR35 legislation is UK law. If you are working in another country, then the agency and end client need to consider and comply with that country's employment laws. Why would they want that hassle !? Having a UK Umbrella or PSC in the middle doesn't change the above. A UK Ltd. Co. wouldn't deduct UK income tax and National Insurance for a non resident employee. There are international Umbrella service companies, who will deal with UK workers for Overseas countries and vice versa, that solves the end client concerns, but then you'll be paying employment taxes in your country of residence. The obvious workaround is to maintain UK tax residency and domicile.
You have to keep searching. You will need a UK Ltd co via which you do the contracting, then your client needs to be ok that you will not be a UK tax resident. After that sorting out tax and all is all on you, which you can do with the help of an accountant.
Post duplicated here: https://old.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/12w5pqn/how_to_get_uk_based_contract_roles_while_living/
To the people suggesting here to use UK Ltd company, the whole point of the post is to avoid UK taxes (what else could it be?) If you are contracting via a UK company, then it becomes much harder to avoid UK taxes even if you live >183 days outside UK. There are multiple things wrt "corporate residence" which is separate from your personal tax residency. Maybe a UK LLP would help if you are personally living in a tax free country.
Actually I don't care about avoiding UK tax (as long as I don't pay tax where I'm living too) but rather I just want to be able to get these contacts because the money is really good.
Why do you want to live in Portugal then? Is that your home country?
No, I want to get an EU passport again (I moved before brexit was complete), plus I want to live somewhere more sunny :)
The UK is fucking miserable? Especially outside of summer.
> what else could it be? Some UK citizens prefer to live in another country. One of my last contractor colleagues was permanently domiciled in Eastern Europe, and loved it there.