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A lot to cover today and I'm going to start with a piece of good news, which applies to everyone not just umbrella company workers and contractors.

Those of you previously on a 543L tax code may have noticed that it changed last week to 603L. This was introduced to adjust (rectify!?) the government's tax changes back in April. It is the new stardard tax code and for those of you on other L tax codes should see an increase of 60 to the number before the L. These changes will be in place for the rest of the financial year, so until April 2009. It may make only a modest difference, but more money in your pocket so no bad thing (especially given the week we have had).

Any of you that read Susan's Legal Bits will notice Susan's distinctive style in the next section:

We've been getting a few calls this week about the opt-out form for the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 that we sent out along with the TUPE letters. The opt-out gives you the chance to express that you do not wish for this piece of legislation to govern your relationship with the agencies you work through, but it has no bearing on your relationship with your umbrella company it's just that, as a limited company worker, you have the right to choose whether the legislation will apply to the agencies you find work through or not.

You can change your mind any time you are between contracts by simply sending us a signed note stating your new choice.

The decision is all yours and, although it's important to make a decision, whatever you choose is simple to change so it won't be the end of the world. For more advice please don't hesitate to give us a call and Susan our HR Manager is always happy to answer any questions you may have.

I've been asked recently to talk about the self billing, as it's becoming more of a feature of the relationships between umbrella companies, agencies, and contractors. Some of you may already be aware of the concept of self billing because companies or agencies that you've worked with previously under our umbrella company contract have had a self billing arrangement with us. Self billing is just a method of speeding up paperwork between businesses, it essentially allows the company that will be paying for a service to raise an invoice for the value of that service without having to wait for an invoice to be sent to them.

You can't just become self billing, there are a set of criteria you must meet before you can and even then you have to have an agreement with each business with which you have a self billing agreement. It's not a blanket arrangement. For umbrella companies like ourselves dealing with so many companies and agencies on a weekly basis, it can be extremely helpful and it makes things quicker and easier for you as well.

That's it for now, have a great weekend, fingers crossed the sun sticks around for the whole of it. As always if you want to get in touch, you can just by clicking on either Hugo below, or Susan up in the text.

Hugo
19/09/2008