u/bigdaveygeorge

in the UK, working as a web developer for a company in the US, they have no overseas entity.

I work through a UK based umbrella company, which me plus the US firm agreed on when we started, they are open to changing this if I need to.

I'm separately self employed/sole trader and do self assessment - not a limited company.

At the start I just wanted to get set up and the umbrella seemed the easiest as it took away the concerns of whether I was in/out of IR35.

I'm now 18+ months in and lose so much every month due to paying the umbrella service charge, bank fees, and employers national insurance.

As I'm self employed as a sole trader, and the contract allows me to work for others, non exclusive contract (which I do, but doesn't bring in anywhere as much), remote, no set working hours, etc, it seems like I would be better billing direct and filling out the W8 form tax treaty form for them? Saving me thousands alone in the employers national insurance which I have to pay for using the umbrella.

Worth noting: I have a limited company in voluntary liquidation, the company I'm now contracted to bought the assets from that company, I shut it down, and started working for them via the umbrella.

I assume the answer is it's safer to stay in the umbrella, but I just want to check if I'm being too cautious using the umbrella company, and effectively doing myself outta money when I shouldn't be.

My app seems to now have some annoying swipe to queue, I'm constantly accidently queuing up songs while trying to scroll. can't seem to find an option to disable it. Is there an option somewhere?

Over ten years ago, maybe 15, I had an Astra van, I bought it private and it was a category C or D. One day 2 police men turned up at my house and wanted to look around it as it's cat c and they have to check them, they looked in the back and under the bonnet, said something about the engine cover missing and disappeared off, didn't hear anything else.

Thought nothing of it until I was day dreaming earlier... This isn't a thing they do right?

At the time I used to hang around with my mates in car parks in their cars, maybe I came up on some CCTV or something so they were actually checking on something else?

This work for anyone else? Doesn't seem to be any order to it whatsoever.