I find a speakerphone invaluable for waiting.
Also, it might not be perfect, but have you considered using either two monitors or else two windows, one moved out of sight with the things for discussion with HMRC and the one in front of you for what you want to do whilst waiting.
A number of people have suggested exporting to Excel and thence bridging software.
As you may know, Excel is part of the paid-for Office suite from Microsoft.
Most people seem only to have heard of Microsoft with its ubiquitous Office software but there are alternatives with significant advantages.
Could I put in a suggestion of using LibreOffice which can import .csv files as well as a host of other formats. It can output various formats including Excel-type .xls files to bridging software.
LibreOffice is a full office suite including spreadsheet, document, drawing and other packages.
It is free to download (with a polite request for a voluntary donation). It uses it's own formats but can import, save and export in the Microsoft .xls, xlsx, doc and docx formats.
As it is free you can try it and see how you get on. You may never look back.
Tax Optimiser is £30 per year for a business (free for the first year), compliant and fairly straightforward to use.
It imports an excel spreadsheet and then does its thing.
Sharing information with UK colleagues I understand that in India newly qualified software graduates will work in India for a couple of years. The best will then leave to work in the US. The second best will leave to work in Europe. The third tier will stay in India.
Indian graduates also expect a career path where after a (very) few years they expect to be managers. Whereas in the UK there are highly experienced older software engineers writing code, software coding in India will usually be written by those who have limited experience.
Companies have for years outsourced and off-shored their core software to the likes of Infosys and Wipro. The prices are really good. Quality, function and usability may be more interesting.
Twenty years ago it was being quoted that a cost saving up to 10% could be made by outsourcing provided that the projects were closely managed by staff from the UK. If projects were not managed then there was unlikely to be a successful delivery and there would be excess costs (but by then the IT director pushing the outsourcing would have collected his bonuses and moved on before failure was evident). Meanwhile the UK staff with all their experience would have been lost.
I can't speak for your outsourced bookkeepers but in life you usually get what you have paid for. Buy cheap, buy twice (if you are lucky) .
I suspect that you need advice on how to be compliant with the IR35 legislation.
If you are the "end-user" and consider yourself an employer you are already in the mind-set where you will need to operate the IR35 legislation.
Demanding that your "employee's company" indemnifies you for monies that are your responsibility to pay would seem difficult to enforce no matter what agreement you have contrived.
You would seem to have two options to be compliant with the legislation - either you use an independent contractor and pay the "PSC" gross after determining that both the agreed terms and the actual work are for an independent business providing services or a package of work, or you need to create a written Status Determination Statement (SDS) and pass it to the PSC and then pay the PSC net of taxes.
I suspect that there will be very few PSCs which will be prepared to operate in an "inside IR35" environment as they will be operating with all their costs coming out of already-taxed income.
If you think that your ex-client has sufficient assets to cover your bill and is trading profitably have you considered a winding-up order?
I believe that it may concentrate his mind.
I started with Microsoft DOS 3.1 and migrated to Windows 3, 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7 and finally Windows 10. I have used Ubuntu 10.04 through to 20.04 with trials of Linux Mint and Puppy Linux. All OS's take time for familiarity but for ease of installation I go for Linux every time. I make great use of the various forums and also web-searches where most problems have been solved already.
One thing to bear in mind is that at the heart of a Linux PC is a core. On top of the core is placed a desktop which is what one sees on the screen.
There are dozens different desktops and thus dozens of versions on Linux all based on the same core. Windows 10 mostly needs higher resources than Linux. With Linux the user can choose to use a relatively resource-heavy Linux desktop such as Ubuntu, Mint, etc or a resource-light desktop such as Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Puppy Linux, etc.
On the subject of drivers, I choose printers/copiers which have Linux drivers available but mostly hardware is just seen by the OS and relevent drivers are installed automatically on installation, somewhat unlike the situation with many laptops when Windows 10 was released and e.g. WiFi stopped working because there were no drivers.
Moving from Windows might be daunting so you could try out a lightweight version on an old PC which won't run Windows 10.
One of the beauties of Linux is that nearly all varieties are free to download and use without all the tedium of installation codes and licences. However, you will need an investment of time but think how much time you will have spent over the years sorting out Windows crashes with work lost and other problems.
We have been using Linux Ubuntu since 2006 for the business. We only use the LTS (Long Term Support) versions. We used Ubuntu 10.04 through to 18.04 and soon to be version 20.04.
I also use VirtualBox to run Windows 10 for payroll software that is not supported natively in Linux.
Few people I know have even heard of Linux but I use search engines or the Linux Forums for support and it can take some time to deal with my own support.
I used to use OpenOffice but now use LibreOffice for spreadsheets and word processing, Thunderbird for email and Firefox for browsing.
It was a nasty surprise when I last installed Windows 10 on a laptop and then had to find masses of Windows software utilities which with my Linux installations were already installed (free) with the OS or were readily available (mostly free) from software depositories. It was a worse surprise when there was a major Windows 10 update which left the laptop unusable and I had to wipe the hard drive and completely re-install Windows.
I remember years ago when most people seemed to expect and accept that Windows software would frequently crash and need re-booting with all recent work lost. When I suggested that this was not normal people were amazed.
The 5% to which you refer is an expense that the company can use to offset any CT due but only if the contractor is not under S D or C.
Presumably he could reclaim any company losses against earlier years earnings.
My answers
I find a speakerphone invaluable for waiting.
Also, it might not be perfect, but have you considered using either two monitors or else two windows, one moved out of sight with the things for discussion with HMRC and the one in front of you for what you want to do whilst waiting.
A number of people have suggested exporting to Excel and thence bridging software.
As you may know, Excel is part of the paid-for Office suite from Microsoft.
Most people seem only to have heard of Microsoft with its ubiquitous Office software but there are alternatives with significant advantages.
Could I put in a suggestion of using LibreOffice which can import .csv files as well as a host of other formats. It can output various formats including Excel-type .xls files to bridging software.
LibreOffice is a full office suite including spreadsheet, document, drawing and other packages.
It is free to download (with a polite request for a voluntary donation). It uses it's own formats but can import, save and export in the Microsoft .xls, xlsx, doc and docx formats.
As it is free you can try it and see how you get on. You may never look back.
Thank you.
Tax Optimiser is £30 per year for a business (free for the first year), compliant and fairly straightforward to use.
It imports an excel spreadsheet and then does its thing.
Sharing information with UK colleagues I understand that in India newly qualified software graduates will work in India for a couple of years. The best will then leave to work in the US. The second best will leave to work in Europe. The third tier will stay in India.
Indian graduates also expect a career path where after a (very) few years they expect to be managers. Whereas in the UK there are highly experienced older software engineers writing code, software coding in India will usually be written by those who have limited experience.
Companies have for years outsourced and off-shored their core software to the likes of Infosys and Wipro. The prices are really good. Quality, function and usability may be more interesting.
Twenty years ago it was being quoted that a cost saving up to 10% could be made by outsourcing provided that the projects were closely managed by staff from the UK. If projects were not managed then there was unlikely to be a successful delivery and there would be excess costs (but by then the IT director pushing the outsourcing would have collected his bonuses and moved on before failure was evident). Meanwhile the UK staff with all their experience would have been lost.
I can't speak for your outsourced bookkeepers but in life you usually get what you have paid for. Buy cheap, buy twice (if you are lucky) .
I suspect that you need advice on how to be compliant with the IR35 legislation.
If you are the "end-user" and consider yourself an employer you are already in the mind-set where you will need to operate the IR35 legislation.
Demanding that your "employee's company" indemnifies you for monies that are your responsibility to pay would seem difficult to enforce no matter what agreement you have contrived.
You would seem to have two options to be compliant with the legislation - either you use an independent contractor and pay the "PSC" gross after determining that both the agreed terms and the actual work are for an independent business providing services or a package of work, or you need to create a written Status Determination Statement (SDS) and pass it to the PSC and then pay the PSC net of taxes.
I suspect that there will be very few PSCs which will be prepared to operate in an "inside IR35" environment as they will be operating with all their costs coming out of already-taxed income.
If you think that your ex-client has sufficient assets to cover your bill and is trading profitably have you considered a winding-up order?
I believe that it may concentrate his mind.
I started with Microsoft DOS 3.1 and migrated to Windows 3, 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7 and finally Windows 10. I have used Ubuntu 10.04 through to 20.04 with trials of Linux Mint and Puppy Linux. All OS's take time for familiarity but for ease of installation I go for Linux every time. I make great use of the various forums and also web-searches where most problems have been solved already.
One thing to bear in mind is that at the heart of a Linux PC is a core. On top of the core is placed a desktop which is what one sees on the screen.
There are dozens different desktops and thus dozens of versions on Linux all based on the same core. Windows 10 mostly needs higher resources than Linux. With Linux the user can choose to use a relatively resource-heavy Linux desktop such as Ubuntu, Mint, etc or a resource-light desktop such as Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Puppy Linux, etc.
On the subject of drivers, I choose printers/copiers which have Linux drivers available but mostly hardware is just seen by the OS and relevent drivers are installed automatically on installation, somewhat unlike the situation with many laptops when Windows 10 was released and e.g. WiFi stopped working because there were no drivers.
Moving from Windows might be daunting so you could try out a lightweight version on an old PC which won't run Windows 10.
One of the beauties of Linux is that nearly all varieties are free to download and use without all the tedium of installation codes and licences. However, you will need an investment of time but think how much time you will have spent over the years sorting out Windows crashes with work lost and other problems.
We have been using Linux Ubuntu since 2006 for the business. We only use the LTS (Long Term Support) versions. We used Ubuntu 10.04 through to 18.04 and soon to be version 20.04.
I also use VirtualBox to run Windows 10 for payroll software that is not supported natively in Linux.
Few people I know have even heard of Linux but I use search engines or the Linux Forums for support and it can take some time to deal with my own support.
I used to use OpenOffice but now use LibreOffice for spreadsheets and word processing, Thunderbird for email and Firefox for browsing.
It was a nasty surprise when I last installed Windows 10 on a laptop and then had to find masses of Windows software utilities which with my Linux installations were already installed (free) with the OS or were readily available (mostly free) from software depositories. It was a worse surprise when there was a major Windows 10 update which left the laptop unusable and I had to wipe the hard drive and completely re-install Windows.
I remember years ago when most people seemed to expect and accept that Windows software would frequently crash and need re-booting with all recent work lost. When I suggested that this was not normal people were amazed.
The 5% to which you refer is an expense that the company can use to offset any CT due but only if the contractor is not under S D or C.
Presumably he could reclaim any company losses against earlier years earnings.