[boothead]

You disagree with following the letter of the law and taking home extra thousands of pounds per year? Personally my attitude it that I'll apply whatever optimizations my accountant says I can without being too creative :-)

Also, some companies that masquerade as umbrellas are doing some pretty shady things. If they promise some un-feasibly large percentage of take home pay (over 80%) they're probably doing some dodgy Isle of Man scheme and you'll be left holding the can.

[zimpenfish]

It's a moral/ethical stance, I guess - tax funds social infrastructure and I think we need more of that.

Good point about the shady "base pay + loan you never* have to repay" shenanigans - I suspect HMRC will be onto them soon enough though.

[boothead]

I agree that we do need more of that. I balk at the bombastic talk from the government, (who make the laws in the first place) that it's somehow immoral to optimize your tax affairs. I would much rather see them put simpler legislation in place that means that large companies pay their "fair" share of tax, and tax is easier to deal with for small companies. If I ended up paying a bit more tax under that regime and the current large tax avoiders ended up paying a lot more that could be put towards social infrastructure, that would make me happy.

[kybernetyk]

>It's a moral/ethical stance, I guess - tax funds social infrastructure and I think we need more of that.

Then donate that "optimized" tax money to a charity where it does more good than being pumped in some governmental megaproject that burns most of its funding just on overhead.

[lmm]

What makes you believe that charities spend money more effectively than governments? I would expect the opposite; the government at least has the press and voters trying to hold them to account, whereas charities have very little oversight.

[tommyd]

> Then donate that "optimized" tax money to a charity where it does more good

Took the words out of my mouth, exactly my thinking

[zimpenfish]

It's a nice idea but I'm not sure it would make much difference either way (although I do give money to charity anyway.)

[Nursie]

I get calls about these every so often, people who sound lot like recruiters but give away the fact they're selling dodgy schemes after a while.

"We can enable you to take home more than 90%!"

"Err, Right, how can you do that then?"

"By structuring your profits through our scheme! We use a combination of tax-haven bank accounts and directors..."

"I'll stop you right there, isn't this what Jimmy Carr off the tv just got spanked for? No thanks, sounds highly unethical to me."

That said I do do things the 'usual' way and pay myself a small salary, with the rest coming in as share dividends. I'm not sure exactly what proportion I pay in taxes vs a salaried employee, but it's non negligible - 20% Corporation tax on all profits (before I get paid), and 25% dividend tax on anything I get paid over the Higher Rate threshold.