The Umbrella Companies Blog Archive: October 2009
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Thinking of travelling to the World Cup next year in South Africa? If so read on!

I should probably start by introducing myself. My name is Justin and I have been working at Gabem for nearly 7 years now in the Invoicing dept. Basically my job is to raise your invoices and get you paid on time. I've supported Liverpool for as long as I can remember, and I am hoping that next year England do well in the World Cup (no penalty shoot-outs please).

Well I got to thinking since England qualified, that there will be many people considering going to South Africa to support their respective countries, and I thought as I was doing the research anyway I would put together as much useful information as I could and post it up here, to help you get over there and enjoy seeing your country do well.

Health

Before we get to the fun of buying tickets and sorting out accommodation I should probably cover any health concerns you may have about travelling to South Africa. You may have heard that there is a risk of catching Malaria in South Africa. This is true, but the main risk comes from the Northeast and low altitude areas of the Northern Province. All of the games are being played in areas that have been made safe from Malaria, plus it will be winter in South Africa when the World Cup is being played so the number of mosquitoes should be significantly less. Unless you are planning on spending time outside the game cities you shouldn't be at significant risk. All that said I am no Doctor so I would strongly suggest you go see your GP for medical advice on going to South Africa and follow what they say.

Malaria of course is not the only risk, there are other medical precautions you need to think about before visiting South Africa. While you are visiting your GP there are other vaccinations you should consider and discuss with them. The recommended vaccinations are: Tetanus (available as part of a three in one vaccine that includes diphtheria and polio), Hepatitis A and Typhoid. These vaccinations are free depending on what your GP's practice offers.

Here's what the NHS says about travelling to South Africa.

Traveldoctor also has some reasonable information on what vaccinations you might need

Tickets

Ok now on to the fun part and the reason I am writing this.....Tickets to the games! If you're lucky enough to be going to the World Cup, you need to start thinking now about getting tickets to any match or matches you want to see. It's extremely important you get your tickets from a reputable source here in the UK. Don't wait till you are out there hoping to get one, as there will be countless forgeries and it would be a disaster to waste all that money on getting to South Africa and not being able to see to a match. You can apply online for a ticket at the Official FIFA World cup site.

The Official FIFA World Cup site has an excellent FAQ with all sorts of questions and answers concerning tickets, match schedules, and info on the application process for tickets.

Passports and Visas

If you are a British Passport holder and don't intend to stay in South Africa for more than 90 days you don't need to apply for a Visa. If however you don't have a British passport then please check with your national Embassy for more info on what Visa requirements are in place, as they will vary depending on which passport you hold.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has stated that your passport must be valid for at least 30 days after you intend to leave South Africa and they also advise that you have two blank pages in your passport on arrival. Again if you aren't a British passport holder then please speak to your Embassy to see what requirements apply to you.

With regards to accommodation you need to start thinking about booking where you are going to stay and any flights over there as soon as possible as places are filling up fast and prices are only going to go up. It's also worth considering how you'll be travelling around South Africa, specifically to and from games. The longer you leave booking somewhere the less choice you have and it may even mean you finding out that everything is booked up. You have hotels, B&B's and guest houses to think about staying in whilst out there.

A couple of places you could look for World Cup accommodation on the net are listed below, but bear in mind things are booking up very fast:

The FIFA page covering hotels for the world cup

Tripadvisor, a user review website of hotels and holiday locations, may give you access to smaller hotels than the FIFA site.

Travelling within South Africa

Travelling around South Africa might not be quite what you would expect here at home. There are taxis, buses and trains available, but the standard and volume of service available to the masses of fans expected to visit South Africa is all under scrutiny by the press at the moment.

While I don't want to be a scaremonger I feel I must say that at present reading articles about public transport in South Africa that there are concerns from everyone; politicians, fans and the organisers of the World Cup. Serious steps are being taken to make it safer to travel in South Africa, but for the time being there are problems. I will come to what precautions to take whilst travelling in South Africa in my next post and I'll go into more detail about the various means of transport available to you over there.

As part of your planning you will need to look at what group your country has been drawn in and when and where each match will be played, as a few of the games being played involve travelling from one side of the country to the other. If you are going to follow your country for a number of games, a good idea would be to book as many of the internal flights as you can prior to getting to South Africa. If you don't then make sure you budget for any extra flights you might need out there.

Insurance

It might seem like an obvious thing to mention but I can't stress the importance of making sure you have medical and travel insurance. I would go as far as saying that this may be a once in a life time opportunity and South Africa is such a long way from home, you don't want something outside your control to ruin it. When you choose your medical and travel insurance get the most comprehensive you can afford, but cross your fingers and hope you never have to use it.

You can check out most insurance comparison websites for the sort of travel and medical insurance you can get.

Alternatively you could visit Martin Lewis over at Moneysavingexpert who has some advice on finding cheaper insurance.

You may also consider using the site topcashback to help you choose who you get your insurance through, just be sure to read about how it works.

I hope you enjoyed reading this and found it useful, look out for more info appearing in the blog over the next few weeks. Please e-mail in if you think something needs to be added or even to leave your comments

Justin
23/10/2009

Image Sources:

• "UK Passport" original photo was taken by King Chung Huang's photostream and used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License
• "South African train" was taken by Dewet and found on Wikimedia Commons it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic License

With news of MPs' repayments and resignations coming in over expenses, I find myself in a somewhat positive mood with HMRC. The only real flies in the ointment were Jacqui Smith's delightfully insincere apology, and the fact that those MPs that are standing down at the next election (they always remember to say that bit fast and quietly) are going to get a Resettlement allowance of between 50% and 100% of their salaries.

I think they should all consider themselves fairly lucky. It's only the expenses as far back as 2004 that are being scrutinised. If it was a self-assessment being investigated they would look at 7 years of records, and any underpayments would be expected to be paid back in short order.

The most laughable aspect of this whole thing is MPs complaining that the audit is "unfair", clearly misunderstanding what the word means. "Fair" would be claiming expenses in line with the rest of us, in accordance with HMRC rules, something I think we would all be very pleased to see.

For some reason I am reminded of a Heinlein quotation: "I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him."

Those of you who are regular readers will be aware of my slightly ranty post about the fuss surrounding the BBC advising people working with them to become contractors. Well, it has allowed another story to surface from the depths surrounding HMRC taking the accounting firm Vantis to court over their use of the Gift Aid scheme. Their system allowed their clients to avoid the 40% tax bracket and unlike normal Gift Aid left the charities with next to nothing.

Short of outright theft from a charity I don't think I can think of a way the story could be more morally reprehensible. It shares a theme with the MPs in that the complaints from Vantis are that they stayed within the rules, something HMRC are I think about to put to the test. Probably the best part of the story is that the deputy managing director and the managing director of Vantis both of whom have been summoned to court, are former Revenue officers.

There had to be one piece of bad news amid all this, and it's a minor point for most of us. HMRC are changing the time limit on reclaiming tax. The period is shortening from 6 years to 4 years, making March the last point you can claim back tax for the 04/05 and the 05/06 tax years. So don't put off claiming back incorrect tax this year, you'll be missing out.

In other self-assessment related news, I should warn you not to open any emails claiming to be from HMRC, and definitely don't open any attachment on those messages no matter what they say. This is just spam, it happens every year around the self assessment cut off, so just be very careful. If you're not sure about the message, just open your browser and Google "HMRC" and get the number for your local tax office from there. Don't click any links in the email, just delete it.

Hugo
16/10/2009

Just a quick reminder today folks along with a small but shameless plug, I aim to have a proper blog post for you tomorrow. HMRC's deadline for the paper self assessment submissions is looming ominously (October 31st), and if you would like us to do it for you (for the low price of £97.75 inc VAT), your self assessment has to be sent tomorrow, the 15th of October, any paper submissions arriving with us after that will be rejected.

Hugo
14/10/2009

The BBC contracting issue continues to grab headlines. It's a bit of a mystery why, these are hardly corrupt public servants abusing a broken system, they are essentially normal people contracting in a way that has been common practice for decades. Admittedly the way they went about it was less than orthodox, and for the BBC to set up a microsite explaining how to do it was perhaps not the best idea, but neither really warrants the coverage it's getting.

If the method they were using was actually a clear cut form of tax evasion like moving their money offshore then they would deserve everything they were getting, but for the time being we have no real idea whether they have done anything to legitimately earn the ire of HMRC. It's not even as if the amounts being mentioned are approaching those featured in the MPs expenses scandal (and we can be certain that they are probably all breathing a sigh of relief now that the scandal spotlight is on someone else).

I don't think we could be blamed for wondering if the reasons that we're hearing so much about it in the papers isn't down to the fact that many of them are owned by the same person that owns Sky, a direct competitor and vocal critic of the BBC.

I'm going to leave that line of argument now before it gets me ranting or in trouble.

What should be happening here is we should wait for HMRC to do their job and trust their judgement, it is very unlikely that without this artificial attention that there would have been a problem (I certainly find myself sympathising with whoever is doing the investigation) so we can make any judgements on facts rather than the briefest details.

Hugo
09/10/2009

Does it make you feel better to know it’s not just YOU! As the self-employed status of TV and Radio stars like Jeremy Paxman, Chris Moyles, Fearne Cotton and Fiona Bruce comes under HMRC scrutiny for what the Sunday Times calls ‘sophisticated schemes’ to protect their earnings, the contractor payroll industry braces itself for the results of yet another HMRC review of self-employment in the construction industry.

As you are probably well aware we operate both an umbrella company for temporary workers and payment arrangements for self-employed individuals. Most of our operatives are in the construction field, and we have jumped through every hoop presented to us in the past 10 years to ensure that individual workers, their employment agencies, and we ourselves, comply fully with legislation. A BBC spokesman, when asked about using freelances, reportedly responded “these arrangements are legal, proper and commonplace within the industry”. Well said.

Lyn
05/10/2009

As you may be aware the minimum wage increased this week (yesterday in fact, October 1st) to £5.80 from the £5.73 it was previously. This means that any wages paid out after the 7th will be at the new higher rate. The impact to those of you using Gabem (or any true umbrella company for that matter) will be minimal unless you are using our CIS holiday scheme where you can now expect to save even more money over a year.

The minimum wage increases across the board were:

£5.80 per hour for everyone over the age of 21

£4.82 per hour for 18 - 21 year olds

£3.57 per hour for people under the age of 18 that have completed compulsory education.

The adoption of this tiered payment structure has been criticised quite heavily over the years, and I think you can understand why younger workers might well be irritated at being apparently short changed, but the tiers are there for a reason. The lower rate for younger people gives employers an incentive to take them on, and gets them in to work quickly, hopefully getting them experience (it also lowers the unemployment rate). For a person who may not have completed secondary education, this experience is essential as it can form the basis of a career and give those who start work at 16 something of an advantage sometimes over those who have gone on to university (heated debates often occur when discussing the pros and cons of these two elements of the workforce).

Another recent and significant change to the minimum wage legislation is that dealing with waiting staff. As of yesterday people employing waiting staff have to pay minimum wage regardless of tips. Prior to this change as long as an employer could show that someone waiting on tables had received the minimum wage from working in the restaurant one way or another, they had fulfilled their wage obligations (so long as it was a minimum wage contract).

The national minimum wage in this country is a good balancing act between the needs of businesses and workers. If you think the yearly increase seems small it's worth considering that the minimum wage set in 1997 in the US of $5.15 per hour remained unchanged for 10 years (during which the total inflation rate was around 30%) only reaching $7.25 per hour (around £4.53) just this year.

Hugo
02/10/2009