| "Still, the UK remains one of the best places in the world to be a contractor. Rates in USA and Canada are a lot lower for contract work, mainly because there isn't as much contact work available." I don't know what the overall stats are, but it's safe to say that in the Bay Area or NYC you can pretty strong rates, and by pretty strong I say in the ~800/day USD or higher range. That's similar to the 500/day GBP rates I saw in London. But of course these numbers vary highly by industry and speciality. My numbers are DevOps/SA senior roles. I'm a contractor and not a big fanatic of day rates. Go hourly, if you can, since 40 hour weeks are rare in today's world, so daily rates at places like the large investment banks are 10+ hour days, frequently. I'd ask 100/hr at a bare minimum for a senior role. You might not get a contract as quickly as you'd get a full-time role, but the demand is there. Back to the point you raised - there are a great many contract roles in the U.S., but it's very hard to go corp to corp with the client. The recruiters / consulting firms love to skim 40-60% overhead, and it's hard to market yourself directly to clients without knowing people. As another datapoint, I had a buddy in the UK who was contracting and there was this scheme where he was being taxed at some absurd rate in the 25% range due to being paid from a trust. No idea how common or known that is, but in NYC my tax rate's in the 45% range (after expenses). |