[AWSAWS]

Hi Guys,

can anyone tell me this? If you are in full time employment and you get offered a great contract. Is it possible to contract and work full time at the same time?

Can you just setup a limited company and do the contract through that in your spare time?

I've had a great contract passed my way for good pay that I could easily do. My concern is once the contract finishes, it may be difficult to find something local. Either contract or permanent. This contract isn't local but the pay is so good that I could stay where the job is during the week. My current job is just a 25 min drive from where I live. It's an easy going office with interesting work but there's not much opportunity for advancing in my career. Current pay is alright for now but should be better. No pay increase for 4 years.

[Mboon]

You will be taxed a lot on the second income

[007_e350]

You can do 1099 on contract or do a corp to corp, later one is more flexible .. best to talk to an accountant .. Definitely doable, also opportunities don't come easy so cash it in as much as you can

[djgandy]

Originally Posted by Mboon

You will be taxed a lot on the second income

If you take it as income. You may decide to leave it in the business.

You'll need a good accountant for sure.

[AWSAWS]

As I've never contracted before. If I decided to resign from my current role and take on this contract (which is for 6 months, but expected to last 2 years), then what rights do I have should they decide to cancel the contact for any reason?

I guess I also need to setup a limited company right? To make the tax situation better.

[_Ascension_]

If you were to set up a Ltd company, as djgandy said, you could leave the money which you invoiced for the contract in the business. You could also take out a certain amount as dividends as the director of that company.

I'm not sure exactly how much you'd get taxed on it after already having a primary income though- as a contractor I keep myself below tax brackets with salary and take as much as possible as dividends.

I'm pretty sure you'd still be able to take a certain amount at 7.5% dividend tax, but perhaps not have a tax free allowance on them. Not sure though, this is why I pay an accountant to do all this for me

[AWSAWS]

Originally Posted by _Ascension_

If you were to set up a Ltd company, as djgandy said, you could leave the money which you invoiced for the contract in the business. You could also take out a certain amount as dividends as the director of that company.

I'm not sure exactly how much you'd get taxed on it after already having a primary income though- as a contractor I keep myself below tax brackets with salary and take as much as possible as dividends.

I'm pretty sure you'd still be able to take a certain amount at 7.5% dividend tax, but perhaps not have a tax free allowance on them. Not sure though, this is why I pay an accountant to do all this for me

Thanks mate.

Hopefully I can just do the contracting full time. Fingers crossed.

[RajB]

Originally Posted by AWSAWS

then what rights do I have should they decide to cancel the contact for any reason?

None as the contract usually allows them to just give 1 weeks notice etc and that's it. Depends really on each contract.

I think with the increased offshoring to India etc it's getting more difficult to find local contracts etc so as long as willing to travel then all good.

My mate was re-signed for a year and literally after a matter of a couple of months they gave him a weeks notice as they decided it was cheaper to get 3 contractors in India for the same price.

[AWSAWS]

Originally Posted by RajB

None as the contract usually allows them to just give 1 weeks notice etc and that's it. Depends really on each contract.

I think with the increased offshoring to India etc it's getting more difficult to find local contracts etc so as long as willing to travel then all good.

My mate was re-signed for a year and literally after a matter of a couple of months they gave him a weeks notice as they decided it was cheaper to get 3 contractors in India for the same price.

Well that sucks!

So far this consultancy who called me about the contract last week and said they'd arrange a first round phone interview for this week haven't done so.

It's so irritating because this job is 90% what I do already but paying the same in 3 months (before tax) that I take home per year after tax.
So a year working there will net close to 4 years income.

Contacted them by email and they said the person who would do the interview is very busy.

I don't want to think it's already fallen through but it probably has.

[Rudz]

Mate, many of the benefits of contracting are eroding slowly

Dividends are taxed from Apr 2016
No income from VAT differential from last month
Tories/Labour want to increase corporation tax/Income Tax and NI ?
Contracting rates are not going up year on year
On Top of this Brexit uncertainties and IR35 rule changes is creating turbulence in current hiring space especially in contract hiring

The Tori govt dislike contractors for sure, they will close down all existing loop holes.

I believe you are in the testing space (I am too)

The market is rapidly moving towards automation. Devops/Agile/AWS are new buzz words. IT is undergoing major transformation. If you know python and are familiar with Tech testing then Contracting offers huge opportunities and you can command a high day rate ....

[AWSAWS]

Originally Posted by Rudz

Mate, many of the benefits of contracting are eroding slowly

Dividends are taxed from Apr 2016
No income from VAT differential from last month
Tories/Labour want to increase corporation tax/Income Tax and NI ?
Contracting rates are not going up year on year
On Top of this Brexit uncertainties and IR35 rule changes is creating turbulence in current hiring space especially in contract hiring

The Tori govt dislike contractors for sure, they will close down all existing loop holes.

I believe you are in the testing space (I am too)

The market is rapidly moving towards automation. Devops/Agile/AWS are new buzz words. IT is undergoing major transformation. If you know python and are familiar with Tech testing then Contracting offers huge opportunities and you can command a high day rate ....

Hey thanks Rudz,

yes I'm in testing. Where I am now we use AWS all the time. I post to a service using C#. Then I look for my data in Kinesis streams, dynamo DB and S3 buckets. The Kinesis streams I read by iterating through. The dynamo DB table I just query from a console. I work with the devops guys to get access to the systems I need. We also do this Agile stuff. (Badly!)
I was a great product manager but I had no choice but to change roles due to a useless manager who I believe character assassinated me. Threatened by my abilities.

I could automate most things with C#. I've not been a full time tester since 2006-2007 so my skills aren't as great as they could be. I actually need to just take some time to look at something like SOLID so that I make nice class designs. My old VB background makes me still think in a procedural and event driven manner.

I've seen selenium tutorials and it looks straight forward enough. I could do with also enhancing my ability on Spec flow and Cucumber etc.

I've always been a person that will write a quick windows app to do anything repetitive like opening websites, creating files, uninstall, reinstall, log etc.

Unfortunately I don't feel at all valued where I work. I'm not getting the opportunities I deserve because of politics. If anything I'm getting penalised.

I can see why contractors would be an easy target. It looks very lucrative. I keep being told about this IR35.

Anyway the interview is on for today. It'll be interesting to chat and see if I can do this job (which I believe I can) and then go from there. There's a 2nd round interview anyway.

[Rudz]

How did u get on pal? U've got the right skills for the contracting market, make best use of it whilst it lasts

[AWSAWS]

Originally Posted by Rudz

How did u get on pal? U've got the right skills for the contracting market, make best use of it whilst it lasts

You know I'm actually not sure. It was made quite difficult as the guy interviewing me didn't speak English as a first language. Seems a strange choice for a phone interview but he's a senior IT security consultant there.

Due to the wannacry stuff it sounded like they were racing around all over the place fixing or securing systems and having to rethink what kind of a person they needed.

The job sounded alot more security management and deployment than testing.
I'm pretty sure I could do it but it sounds a bit different from what I expected. I'm waiting to hear their feedback. It's hard to know how well I was understood but I'm not sure this is the right job for me.

One thing is for sure though. There's a lot of money to be made from this kind of work. 95% of the public just don't seem to understand IT security, especially in the way malware acts and gets onto systems. If I had some money behind me I could probably create a company to offer those services in my own local region.

[quattrogmbh]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the very high probability of an exclusivity clause in your contract of employment for your full-time role. Employers don't typically like their employees moonlighting.

[AWSAWS]

Originally Posted by quattrogmbh

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the very high probability of an exclusivity clause in your contract of employment for your full-time role. Employers don't typically like their employees moonlighting.

I suppose legally that applies to me and not to my limited company but fair point...

[djgandy]

Originally Posted by quattrogmbh

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the very high probability of an exclusivity clause in your contract of employment for your full-time role. Employers don't typically like their employees moonlighting.

IMO things like this are legal boiler plate. I'd like to see it enforced in a situation where there is no conflict of interest or impact on your ability to carry out the role.

[AWSAWS]

I got a reply for a further interview. Not sure I want the job but the pay is amazing. Think I'll just go and see what it's like.

[Rudz]

Originally Posted by AWSAWS

I got a reply for a further interview. Not sure I want the job but the pay is amazing. Think I'll just go and see what it's like.

go for it pal, uncertainty is great for the contracting market, Brexit will require a whole load of IT changes, so if u get in early, there is a lot of money to be made.

[AWSAWS]

Originally Posted by Rudz

go for it pal, uncertainty is great for the contracting market, Brexit will require a whole load of IT changes, so if u get in early, there is a lot of money to be made.

Sounds good but its strange I've heard nothing from them in the last 7 days. Doesnt seem to be any urgency at all where before they were wondering if I could get my notice period down.