Typically, contract work can run anywhere from around 1 month to 12 months in length and sometimes, even longer than that.

Depending on the industry and job, contracts might differ in length but as a recruiter, this is the typical range that I tend to see available.

Depending on the specific situation, here are some possible benefits of contract work:

1. Money

Contractors typically get paid on an hourly basis for actual hours worked with no benefits or holidays paid but depending on the specific job, can often make more money than if they were doing the same job on a fulltime basis. Hence, working on contract – especially if you can find a long-term contract of 1 year or longer – can be quite lucrative. Plus unlike most salaried staff, contract staff get paid overtime.

2. Variation of Work

Contract work often allows you to change your jobs frequently especially if you are working short-term contracts. There isn’t much chance of getting bored if you are constantly working on new projects or for different companies.

3. Tax Benefits

Depending on your local tax laws, you might find tax benefits if you are self-employed and have the ability to write off business expenses.

Considerations

There are some possible negative aspects you need to think about when it comes to contract work. First off, some employers can be turned off considering you for a fulltime job with their company if you have a recent track record of working on contracts.

Since one of the benefits of contract work is the money you can make, hiring managers tend to be aware that many people who choose to work on contracts do so because of the monetary benefits. Therefore, they might be hesitant to hire you fulltime believing you would not stay with them long term earning a salary if a more lucrative contract appeared.

You might need to convince a hiring manager that you will stay long term if your recent work history is made up of contract work.

Also, be prepared for periods of unemployment during slow times. If you’re fortunate, you can pick up a new contract when an old one is ending but it doesn’t always work that way.

Following Y2K when I was working as an Information Technology recruiter, the market for most IT professionals – and especially contractors – went down the toilet as companies had spent their IT budget (and then some) upgrading their systems preparing for Y2K. After this, the dot com bubble burst and then September 11 occurred and by then, many IT professionals had been laid off and previously high-flying contractors were forced to take far less paying fulltime jobs just to get back into the workforce.

Finally, if you’re accepting contract work but prefer fulltime work, keep in mind that timing doesn’t always work in your favour. If you are several months away from finishing a contract and a great fulltime job comes along, what do you do? You might not be able to break your contract to take the fulltime job and the company offering the fulltime job might not be able to wait until your contract is over to hire you.

Becoming A Contractor – Contract Work: The Pros and Cons of Being a Contractor is a post from: UK Contractor Services Offshore Contractors

With good opportunities on the horizon and a stable legislation environment (for the first time in several years) lets hope for a bumper 2012/2013 for all contractors.

Could 2012 Be Your Best Year Yet? is a post from: UK Contractor Services Offshore Contractors

Will this all be reflected in the 2012 budget though? Will we see incentives for more people to shoulder the burden of risk, to take that same risk away from employers? What will the UK government do to help freelancers and contract workers? The majority are after all small business owners and if you belive the rhetoric the news should be good.

On the other hand each successive budget seems to come with attached legislation that makes working for yourself even more of a chore. Whether it is proving that you are actually working independently or not (as the case may be) or ever tightening rules on what is and isn’t an allowable expense. It has got harder to go it alone.

One thing is for sure and that is that budget day is watched even more closely by the contractor community than the general public as a whole. It takes days for the real devil in the detail to be filtered out of the small print, lets all cross our fingers for a contractor friendly budget this time around.

The 2012 Budget Is Nearly Here is a post from: UK Contractor Services Offshore Contractors

Going direct to your bank could mean that you can only get a mortgage on the PAYE element of your contract value, as most of you will know there is every chance that this doesn’t account for a major part of your income. However the bank doesn’t know this and it offers you mortgage terms on that income. Even worse than this the situation could arise where your declared income doesn’t match that of your income tax return causing an investigation to be launched. The banks have very sophisticated systems for checking mortgage applications and depending on the way you are paid would you assume to be correct information may be entered in the wrong place or in the wrong way.

In an ideal world you want to be dealing with mortgage specialists who undertsand not only the nature of contractor work but also the difference ways in which contractors can be remunerated and who can offer mortgages that suit. So before you start applying for mortgages with the usual high street lenders consider using the services of a company like Contractor Mortgages UK. They undertsand your requirements and will be able to find you the best mortgage to fit your set of circumstances, taking into account your full contract value. As a contractor you are no ordinary employee, don’t fall into the trap of assuming you can have access to “normal” employee based mortgages. As a very good friend of mine once said, it costs nothing to ask, you just might get the help you need.

Difficulty Getting A Contractor Mortgage? is a post from: UK Contractor Services Offshore Contractors

Many of the largest companies in the UK have used Employee Benefit Trusts for many years without any problems and not just for the “mega million” employees that Joe Public seems to invisage. These are companies that hire experts whenever any sort of financial or legal liability is a possibility and you can be sure that company EBTs would never have got off the ground if there was such a risk associated with them. For many years EBTs were legitimate business tools. There have been several cases in the past where the specific use of an EBT has been disputed by HMRC but it wasn’t until last year that legislation was put in place to stop people miss-using them. What exactly Rangers allegedly did wrong in their use of EBTs hasn’t been made clear yet and it will be very interesting to see how this finally pans out although with such media coverage it’s hard to see how this decision is going to come down to black and white law. This superb post gives some insight into what Rangers were doing.

Rangers And The Tax Man is a post from: UK Contractor Services Offshore Contractors

Disputes should be resolved much quicker thanks to the ADR team (Alternative Dispute Resolution), who as an independent HMRC entity will help resolve any disputes at the compliance check stage, before an assessment is made. It’s hoped that this should help many more disputes to be resolved before they get anywhere near the tribunal stage, saving both time and money and no doubt a huge amount of frustration for small businesses.

The way the world is right now anything that makes government more efficient and cuts costs has to be applauded, the fact that this should help build a better relationship between the tax man and the types of business the UK government is relying on to dig it out of a whole is just a massive added bonus. Will the ADR fulfill its potential? Only time will tell.

Dispute With HMRC? Things Should Get Better is a post from: UK Contractor Services Offshore Contractors

In short it seems that if people are prepared to burden the risk and consider contracting as an option there are still plenty of opportunities available. Contractors just have to keep in mind that it’s up to them to make sure they are working under the best possible deal they can and it’s absolutely in their best interest to make sure the risk is suitably rewarded by staying as tax efficient as possible.

Contracting Still On The Rise is a post from: UK Contractor Services Offshore Contractors

What could account for this robustness? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that as companies look to make efficencies IT becomes a major part of those cost savings? Automated systems and cutting down on the man hours required to perform certain tasks are an excellent way of making real savings in what you spend month on month. The contractor market in particular can benefit from these efficencies because the last thing companies want to be doing right now is hiring a full time position in order to save a full time position elsewhere. During the boom times of the last 90′s and early 00′s this was common practice. New systems came with new IT staff! It is perhaps for this reason again that traditional database and office integration skills are in high demand. The “get in and get it done” nature of most IT projects have always lended themselves to shorter term contracts as opposed to full time positions and now as efficencies are looked for it’s IT contractors with the right skills that look to be struggling least.

Are You An IT Contractor, Have You Struggled To Find Contracts?

Still Plenty Of Work For IT Contractors? is a post from: UK Contractor Services Offshore Contractors

Of course it is easy for experts to make predictions but one report does seem to have backed it up what most predict. The highly regarded London Employment Monitor report found that there was an 11% improvement in in financial services opportunities just for the period of March 2011. We’ll have to see how the rest of the year pans out but growth anywhere near that level would surely be welcomed by the many people who have been suffering badly for the past few years. Of course the opportunites may be there but it still doesn’t take into account how good those opportunites are.

We’d like to know what you think though. Do you work in the financial services market, have you seen an improvement in the number of job opportunites?

Is The Financial Services Market Recovering? is a post from: UK Contractor Services Offshore Contractors

The Employee Benefit Trust has been a popular alternative to the Umbrella Company for many years. Hundreds if not thousands of self employed contractors and other high net worth professionals (such as those in the creative arts) have taken advantage of the higher rates of pay that can be achieved via the use of an Employee Benefit Trust payroll solution. Where as a typical Umbrella Company gives a gross to net contract ratio of around 65% many EBT solutions offer a return of up to 85%. The opportunity to keep an extra 20% of YOUR pay has been seen as a massive bonus to high earners.

Employee Benefit Trusts also became popular because of the added security they offered. By using an Employee Benefit Trust and becoming an employee scheme members were granted full statutory employment rights and benefits. The lack of a need to keep complicated expense details also endeared this solution to those who preferred to spend more of their time earning money instead of doing paperwork. This was a massive advantage over those that either used an Umbrella Company or who chose to setup their own Limited Company. At this point you’re probably thinking that an Employee Benefit Trusts sounds too good to be true, how come everybody isn’t using them?

The answer to the second question is simple. In order to gain any advantage from an EBT you really need to be earning above a certain level. Some scheme providers set this level at 40,000 a year, others at 50,000 a year. The too good to be true bit is a little harder to explain. In essence it comes down to risk. Employee Benefit Trusts were so tax efficient because of the nature of the loan payment that was given to the employee (i.e. the contractor). The contractor was paid a basic salary and the rest of the money was “loaned”. Because this was paid as a loan (and not as salary) there was no guarantee that the loan wouldn’t be called in. Of course all providers marketed that this wouldn’t happen and that they had various methods of making sure the loan wouldn’t be asked to be repaid. Fine unless the payroll provider encounters money problems which could result in the loan being sold as an asset. Could you imagine the company that now owns that debt not asking for the money back? As far as the legalities go there has been a split with regard to EBTs. The general consensus appears to be that those that are based onshore whilst those offshore were effective.

So even with all the advantages that an Employee Benefit Trust offers their popularity has declined massively.For many contractors the risks associated with an EBT are seen to out way the advanatges. A scenario that has not been helped by several scheme providers being investigated by HMRC. The question is what alternatives are there? The governments stance on contractors seems to go against encouraging innovation and excellence within business. How can you expect people to take the risks associated with working for yourself if the bottom line is no better than being employed to do the same job(minus paid holidays, pension)? It’s all too easy for Civil Servants in comfy 35 hours a week, 30 days a year holiday, final salary pensioned posts to interfere in areas of business where they have little understanding. It is every contractors duty to be paid in a legally compliant tax efficient manner and Employee Benefit Trusts have played there part in this process in the past.

Employee Benefit Trust is a post from: UK Contractor Services Offshore Contractors