Money Making Schemes

Nagesh answers:

Hi

The first thing you need to check is whether you are qualified to work here in the UK and whether you need a work permit.

If you do not have approval to work in the UK currently, you need to apply for that. If the company is to hire you as an employee they would need to look at http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/workingintheuk/workpermits/workpermitarrangements/businessandcommercialworkpermits/. If you want to start in self employment you need to look at http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/policyandlaw/immigrationlaw/immigrationrules/part6/

If you already have leave to work in the UK (and that would make life a lot easier) then you have two choices:

1. Work as a sole trader. To set up as a sole trader you simply need to ley the Revenue you are starting up, and pay them Class 2 National Insurance (£2.30) per week. You then get taxed (and more national insurance) based on profits which you declare to the Revenue once a year in your tax return. The number to call to register as self employed is 08459 15 45 15.

2. Set up your own limited company and work through that. You can set up a company yourself (there are loads of formations agents out there) or do it through your accountant who can also help you structure your payment arrangements in the most effective way. If you do go down this route you may consider paying yourself a mixture of salary and dividend. To pay a salary you have to register the company as an employer and fill in various bits of paperwork on a monthly/quarterly/annual basis as appropriate. To register for PAYE visit http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/newemployers/iwtregister-as-an-employer.shtml or again your accountant can help you with this.

You will then possibly have to think about registering for VAT (not compulsory until your turnover in the last 12 months hits £67,000 – but can be worth it in advance). Http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageVAT_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_001222&propertyType=document Again your accountant can talk you through the mechanics of how to do this – and most importantly what VAT scheme to use because that can save you quite a lot of money or even earn you more for little effort.

Many agencies prefer uising limited companies rather than sole traders, largely because of the “IR35” rules – which basically try to ensure that employees don’t try to pass themselves off as self employed contractors (which is more tax efficient). Http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ir35/ Depending on the work you do that can require professional advice.

Other than that, the usual insurance issues apply (professional indemnity, public liability, employers liability (if you have staff yourself) and so on. I use HERA for my professional insurance and they are quite good. Http://www.heraindemnity.co.uk/

The main banks have some quite useful guides to setting up in business on their websites (I find Lloyds TSB and NatWest usually quite good).

Hope this helps and is what you were after.

Kind regards

David Nicoll
“the accountant with attitude”

Nagesh answers:

You can do either provided you do it consistently.

If you’re not operating the flat rate VAT scheme, it would make your life much easier if you did…see http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/start/schemes/flat-rate.htm

Nagesh answers:

If you’re completely new to genealogy, the best way to start is to read a guide to how to start researching your family tree, e.g. This one from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/familyhistory/

Do not expect to find your family tree ready-made for you on the web. Many amateur genealogists do post their family trees on pay sites, like www.genesreunited.co.uk, or on free sites like www.rootsweb.com, and it is possible that you may come across some of your family on these sites, but:
(a) you have no guarantee that the information you find on these sites is accurate – there are many, many crap genealogists out there on the web, posting badly researched material, stuff they have completely made up and/or just copying and pasting trees they have found elsewhere on the internet without checking its accuracy
(b) that would take half the fun out of it. The reason I find genealogy and family history such an exciting hobby is because it is like being a detective – you have to work long and hard to seek out clues and evidence and I get such a buzz when I come across a document hidden away somewhere that other people researching my tree have missed. If someone handed me my family tree on a plate, it would be about as much fun as someone else doing a crossword puzzle or jigsaw for me – the challenge of doing it yourself is the whole point.

The way I started researching my family tree was by asking my parents (born in 1928) when and where they were born and married and for the names of their parents (i.e. My grandparents) and grandparents (i.e. My great-grandparents) and where and when they were born and married. This took me back to the late 19th century. I knew, from what my Dad had told me, that my great-grandfather was called Frederick Branton and that he’d been born in a place called Hartland in Devon. Although my Dad didn’t know exactly when Frederick was born, as his eldest child was born in 1901, it was unlikely he was born much after 1881 or much before 1861. So I looked at the 1881 census records for Devon (this was long before the internet and involved much ploughing through microfiches in public libraries and the Family Records Centre, but these days you can search for census information on sites like www.freecen.org.uk and www.familysearch.org) and found only one Frederick Branton in Hartland – a ten-year-old boy living with his parents, William and Mary Branton, so I now knew a rough date of birth for my great-grandfather (1870-2) and the names of my great-great grandparents. As the census told me that William had also been born in Hartland and was 60 in 1881, I had a look back at earlier censuses, and when I found in the 1841 census of Hartland a 20-year-old William Branton living with his parents, Thomas and Grace, I now knew the names of my great-great-grandparents. Later on, when I had some money, I ordered William and Mary Branton’s marriage certificate, which confirmed that William’s father was called Thomas, and told me Mary’s surname before marriage, so I could find her in the 1841 census.

The most important thing is that you learn how to use sources properly – it’s possible to compile a wildly inaccurate tree even from official birth, marriage and death certificates, if you don’t know what you’re doing. (In my experience, the biggest mistake that beginners make is assuming that if they find A Mary Smith in the records, that it must be THEIR Mary Smith, and not realising that there would have been dozens of Mary Smiths in that area and that they must eliminate all the wrong ones – this mistake can happen, even if you’re using certificates)

I was going to tell you about some of my favourite free or cheap resources (the British Newspaper Library archives, local village websites, online parish clerk schemes), but many of them will not be relevant to you or you will not be able to use until you’ve traced your family back a certain way or learnt a bit more about genealogy.

This is a great free site, where you can find advice for beginners, ask other genealogists/family historians for advice, make look-up requests and find lists of good online resources for your county: http://www.rootschat.com/

Anyway, best of luck.

Nagesh answers:

I am a kind of person, who believe that it is not easy to make money and there is no scheme which can make you rich overnight. I have always stayed away from all these MLM business and Pyramid schemes. You keep on making down lines and sell products or do marketing, that is not my cup of tea. I prefer to work on my own. From one of their videos, I got their skype id and had a chat with the person called Kelvin Lim. My first question to him was.. Are you guys genuine or you are just running a scam site? Well the answer was no and Kelvin explained me how it worked. As per my information, one has to pay $250 and join TVIExpress and once you have two downlines, you get $500.

Nagesh answers:

3. Do think that pensions, along with all other welfare schemes, should be financed by the taxpayer at subsistence level, but everyone is free to supplement this privately if feasible.

I would raise the basic and higher rate of Income Tax to give enough room to make the necessary adjustments.

I would then simplify the whole benefits and taxation structure, streamlining it entirely into one operation – the wealthy being taxed positively, the poor being taxed negatively (i.e. Given benefit payments under the same system), and the whole system worked out so that it works smoothly, and nobody who works or endeavours to supplement their income is worse off than those that don’t, yet everyone is assured a basic subsistence – to enable the basics of eating, drinking, sanitation, health care and shelter, but that’s it.

One thing ignored by the stupid conventional thinkers is that inheritances can provide a pension for the next generation down, in return for care for the older generation. Rather than taking the lot in punitive tax grabs, just at a time when a family is in a state of grief, Government should encourage this transfer of money down the generations as a way of alleviating the pension problem.

I would then abolish the status of unemployment or retired – everyone claiming benefit is free to work as much or as little as they wish or are able, without sanction, for as long as they are engaged in the system and declare all their earnings.

I certainly do not trust private pension fund managers with my pension – there is just too much legal thievery and reckless gambling with other people’s money, and they have showed themselves to be even more corrupt than nationalised pension providers.

Everyone gets a tax code, according to their needs and civic status, and this sets the point where a benefit becomes a tax, and is worked using PAYE. Means tested taxes, charges for public services and benefits should be abolished, and incorporated into general taxation wherever these are universal. Only local variations should be taxed or subsidised locally.

Civic status is defined by the NI number. Those born and bred into the country and engaged with the system all their lives get preferential treatment over those whose eligibility is set by Treaty agreements (such as non-British EU or Commonwealth citizens), and this gets preferential treatment over those to whom there are no obligations. Changes of status will result in the issue of a new NI number, and all visitors with working visas must have a NI number.