doobin

There's nothing whatsoever a good accountant can do to stop you from having to charge VAT other than to tell you not to earn more than 85k in a 12 month period.

Sounds like as much of a bubble if not more than Central London!

I can't get anywhere near those kind of rates for small domestic jobs, which is why I don't do them. This is down South too. I cost labour in at £250 a day, add materials and then multiply by 40% profit margin and I still don't win them. Is your brother a hypnotist or simply knobbing the housewife (or even husband?) 🤣

No, you are the self employed bloke with no staff and few overheads, as both Steve and I alluded to. I even went so far as to say that 85k/year with few overheads was respectable!

Good point. This surely reinforces my original post (Holy thread revival, Batman!) whereby I implied that being more profitable via the use of machinery is encouraged by VAT registration, yet this benefit is hard to quantify. If a non registered company has swallowed VAT of tens of thousands on the machinery you list, then that implies (say two tens of thousands, 20k VAT) the purchase of assets worth 100k, and they are big enough to be VAT registered without worrying about it. Non VAT registered competition is a secondhand Transit and old Timberwolf and maybe a secondhand digger or loader. All these devalue to a lower floor whereby VAT is not really relevant any more, and indeed are often sold by non VAT registered individuals anyway. For a one man band with occasional help, £85k turnover a year with the above kit doing smaller jobs is respectable, achievable, profitable and can make you a thorn in the side of other VAT registered businesess competing in the domestic market.

If you are VAT registered, you must collect 20% tax on all your turnover, whilst only being able to reclaim 20% of your costs. A non vat registered company can charge this extra 20% as 'the going rate', and keep it. Sure, they can't relaim VAT, but that's only on a proportion of their turnover, and plenty of suppliers to small businesses may not be VAT regeistered anyway. So dependant upon profit levels, they'll probabbly be around 15% up on the VAT registered company. I did then go on to list harder to quantify benefits of being registered, but in pure figures being VAT registered leaves you less profit if a non registered firm is able to do the job for the same price

How many people on other business sectors have experienced the same due to Covid? Yet instead of ten days, for many it's been a long, drawn out process- stop start, yes you can, no you can't, borrowing desperately to pay the commercial landlord. We've not yet seen the scale of defaults on the CBILs in particular, and you can bet that currently there are families falling apart over the borrowing. If you are an ADI then you will never be short of work. Or there's always firewood processing. You know, actualy productive work.

Those that can, do. Those that can’t… well, you know the rest. Let’s not loose sight of the fact that trailer training was not regulated. There was no exam to pass before being allowed to call yourself a trainer, unlike a regular driving instructor.

FFS you barely got round the headland! 🤣

Fully agree. We need less regulation not more. Plenty of young lads with souped up Corsas (at least, that what they had when I were a lad! 😀) will have passed a driving test... doesn't mean that you want your daughter in the car with them.

That’s mostly what I use my blowtorch for too 🤣

It’s a fuel gas, a blend of propane and something else I think. Plumbers use it in a blowtorch for brazing as it burns hotter than butane. I have it in my blowtorches and I think you can buy big bottles of it, although I use oxy propane for workshop heating and cutting. I’d guess that set has mapp gas as it’s safer than acetylene yet can produce a neutral flame for welding

You could always drill, syringe in herbicide and then cap with a wooden plug. Plug cutter sets are cheap enough- probably less than half a dozen eco plugs!

For years I used an old oil tank with a door cut and welded. I recently moved to a new yard and have a 9x7 container which I just forklifted into a corner, but that’s probably a bit big for you.

Guess I’d better go get me a box of Shreddies….

Well then they can keep increasing wages for current drivers or loose out on work can’t they?

Result. Very happy here. We are starting to see proof of the benefits of leaving the EU.

Yes and domestic tree surgery is none of the above.

Not stopping those running tractors though, that's my point.

There will be big cost inflations on materials, etc, but there is no way this would up the cost of a house by 10%. The value of a house in the UK is in the planning permission. House prices jumped by 10% this year due to a temporary government tax break FFS! People were spending £20k to save £5k. Even a shitty house in a shitty area is £100k- £10k increase would mean that 20,000 litres of diesel (white rather than red so 50p/l extra tax for ease of maths) would be required for the construction. No way. And that's for a dirt cheap house. 10% of a £400k newbuild in the Home Counties? Come on..... Add ons such as extensions or landscaping to existing houses will be more expensive basically- that's where people will notice and whinge about it, when they have to hand over cash. But every time the government introduces a new prop to keep prices high people just add another five years onto the mortgage term. Help to buy, anyone? £50k loan from the government to buy a shitty new build. Oh look- Persimmons profits went up £49k the same year! Who'd have thought it?

A few people have been pulled recently in my local area with tractors and plant. All they were interested in is whether the tractor was using white diesel. So one presumes that's HMRC, VOSA are nowhere to be seen. Might get myself a tractor and employ a 17 year old to drive it with no road tax. Just so long as I run it on white. Still cheap haulage.

That's Britian in a nutshell mate. Just look at all the Covid bullshit from the start.

Surely no more dangerous to take a lawn rake up there than to walk behind a mower and belt rake? I'd look at a large spring tine rake on a mini digger. If it's not too large a bank you should be able to get the digger positioned at the start of it with the blade behind you and rake down. To be fair, if a two wheel tractor with belt rake will climb it a good man will easily track a mini digger up it. Post some photos.

Pretty uncommon bit of kit. Are you looking to rake strimmed grass off a bank?

There isn’t one. It’s a conflict between two protected things. If you don’t cut the roots back they’ll keep pushing on the wall. You can’t build the wall further away cause it’s not the wall owners land. you could potentially airspade back and then build a secondary retaining wall that the tree can’t push over. Lots of work and mega money just because common sense can’t be applied by the council.