An Umbrella Company provides a number of benefits to a Contractor and is an alternative to managing a Ltd Company.
The main financial benefit of using an Umbrella Company is the legitimate off-setting of business expenses. HMRC has strict guidelines about what expenses you can legitimately offset, and in what circumstances but in general terms, if you are at a temporary place of work, and expect to be there for less than 2 years, then the cost of travel to the temporary site, accommodation if you need to stay away from home, subsistence and tools specific to the contractor, are all able to be offset against tax. The Umbrella Company does not reimburse you these expenses, but by offsetting them against tax it means that this part of your income is treated as non-taxable. So, for example, if you earn £1,000 in a week but have legitimate expenses of £200, then we would pay you £800 as salary (which is liable to Tax and NI as any normal salary is) but the £200 of expenses is non-taxable.
There are other financial benefits to using an Umbrella Company. If your Umbrella Company doesn’t tie you into minimum contracts then you can use the Umbrella Company without long-term commitments to your own insurance policies, yearly accountancy costs etc. If you set up your own Ltd Company you will need to get insurance in place to cover you while working on the client’s site and to indemnify the work that you do. If you then decide that contracting isn’t for you, the financial commitment has already been made.
An Umbrella Company will take care of the day to day admin for you, such as invoicing your agency for the hours, offsetting your business expenses, end of year tax forms (such as P60).
Whereas with your own Ltd Company you will have to complete Annual Returns to Companies House, submit company accounts, register for VAT and submit VAT returns (subject to turnover), pay Corporation Tax on any profits of the company, complete Self-Assessments etc, with a PAYE Umbrella Company they do all the admin and forward your pay net of PAYE and NI. This is ideal for contractors who want to keep all the advantages of being a contractor in regards to flexibility, yet don’t want the hassle of running their own Ltd Company.
As the Umbrella Company is already set up, this means that the process of registering with an Umbrella Company is usually quick and straightforward compared to setting up a Ltd Company with Companies House, setting up company Bank Accounts, and getting insurance in place. It takes only a couple of minutes to register using our online registration.