Why is it so difficult to find employees?

durhamjen

Blimey, have I got this right.

You say , "If you are going to collect VAT for the government you have to take £100.000 to allow for VAT'.

If you pay your window cleaner £5 and hour and he pays tax and income tax but he doesn't want to 'collect VAT for the government', does that mean he earns over £1000.000 cleaning windows??? Or have I missed something. I do realise that you say there are two of them but I am confused why VAT comes into the equation unless he takes £1000.000 plus a year.

Also why don't you tell your window cleaner that you subscribe in principal to the living wage and you want to pay him what your conscience makes you do and increase his rate to £7.65 an hour! I am sure he could pay a little extra tax and national insurance.

I am shocked how much you can earn being a window technician.

What a pity this thread has unleashed all this criticism of women trying to run their own businesses and provide legitimate jobs. Woman and Home magazine would be horrified (they seem obsessed with women starting businesses don't they).
As someone who runs her own business, albeit I am the only employee, I admire anyone who runs a law-abiding business which involves employing others.
It is easy to pontificate about tax evasion - but there is actually huge tax evasion in this sector - both by those who work in it and those who pay cash in hand and get services cheaper. (we've all done it, probably, with window cleaners , babysitters, cleaners, odd job men etc etc I certainly have. ). Your neighbours are probably the exception rather than the rule Galen in my experience.
Could we get back to the original post about the difficulty of employment - there are regional variations, huge ones, in unemployment and in rates of pay for services - hence my question about which region OP.
Probably best if we take this to a PM conversation OP

My question to you durhamjen was what do you consider to be a living wage? Not what Boris considers it to be. Do you really think a family could live on £7.65 per hour? I don't think so.

Anyone offering jobs is to be encouraged and not vilified. And the question the OP posed does need to be asked. Would I work for the minimum wage if I was desperate? Too right I would.

I could probably answer that question GillT57 but I'd have to run for cover afterwards.

Yes me too Aka (work for minimum wage that is) and have worked in jobs that paid "below the board of trade" in the days before minimum wage. I was glad to as I was a young single mother.

Anyone running or starting their own small business these days needs their head looking into deserves a medal (and yes that includes me too).

I hate to say this but I cannot imagine many one/two man band window cleaners actually declaring all of the £5's never mind registering for VAT !

My window cleaner charges £12! £5 seems very cheap...

Excuse me but what is a window cleaner?

My window cleaner charges £15 Dragonfly1 . Mind you he runs a legitimate cleaning company and employed several cleaners. He uses one of these power cleaning systems as we live in a three storey house and it is difficult to find the traditional style window cleaner to do the upstairs. We did start off having the windows done every month but £15 per month is a lot of money and so have cut back to every other month. We live very close to the sea and have a permanent salty coating on the windows in the winter.

I know Charleygirl. I always did my own in my last house but I cannot manage the top floors and the style of windows makes it impossible to "hang out".

A window cleaner is something you have to resort to when you can no longer hang out of the upstairs windows, or dangle precariously from a ladder. Believe me, Charleygirl I'd rather be able to clean them myself, as I've always done until the last couple of months. I'm cheaper.

gillybob I am in the same position re windows. I can do the ground floor but bedrooms are beyond me for the same reason.

We had a window cleaner here about 3 years ago. He came every other month, did around 5 houses and charged £10 a time. I think that he got greedy because the intervals between visits shortened and when he was down to fortnightly or close, I had had enough and we have not seen him since. I think he thought that we would not notice! I am certain he only came here when he was short of money.

I bet my Avon lady doesn't pay tax or declare her earning either!

I live in the south west in a seaside town with an elderly population. Cleaners here are like gold dust, so they can pretty much command their own prices. I recently phoned several cleaning companies looking for a cleaner and not one of them could help me due to lack of staff. The price for agency/self employed cleaners is more or less the same, but I doubt many of the 'self-employed' cleaners pay tax and insurance.
Without the Eastern Europeans and other 'foreign' nationals who work here many services in the town would cease. All the hotels are staffed by them, all the nursing homes, many of the cafes and restaurants and yes, the cleaning companies.

What a shame this thread descended into bickering. I agree with Jess

It must be very difficult running a cleaning business. Perhaps we could all be a bit more sympathetic?

I understand why people use the cash economy but it does make it harder for anyone playing by the rules.

Like Aka I would work for the minimum wage if necessary even though that would mean claiming tax credits. If there are people in Colchester who are refusing to take the job why are they getting benefits? Life is tough.

Not telling you how much we pay our window cleaner, you will think we live in a mansion! At least he only comes every couple of months.

Are window cleaner still allowed to use ladders? I thought that was against H & S these days.

Thanks JessM. Much appreciated comment, was feeling a bit beleaguered and wondering why when all I want is to give someone a job. I am now in the position of having to cancel clients which is not good, my current staff step in when they can, but there is a limit. Grannyactivist we have a seaside town as you describe near to us, and I get frequent calls and cant help. Elderly people like the idea of vetted insured staff in their home. Now, I must get off this forum because I have work to do!!! It is too easy to just have a quick look......and 20 minutes later still be on here reading!

I live in NW London, use a cleaning agency and every person on her books is Romanian. I pay the cleaner for the 3 hours that she spends here but I also pay the agency a fee per month. It is £15 something and increases or decreases depending upon the number of hours the person is employed.

I supply all cleaning materials and if anything gets broken (and it has!) that is my responsibility.

POGS, you got it wrong.
You start paying VAT to the taxman when your takings are over 79 thousand pounds. It was a comma, not a decimal point, as you will see if you look again.
If your takings are 80 thousand pounds you pay VAT on the whole amount.
Therefore to pay 20% of that to the government, you need to take 100 thousand pounds.
If you only take 85-90 thousand pounds you would be better off doing less work and not signing up for VAT.
A window cleaner who charged £5 per house and cleaned 4 houses per hour for 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year would take £40 thousand pounds. As you can see, it would be impossible for my window cleaner to earn enough to charge VAT.

Some people on here are being very insulting to cleaners and window cleaners who are paid cash. Why is it always assumed that unless money is paid by cheque, or direct debit, then people must be on the take?
If you are self employed and do not pay NI, you are not eligible for a pension when you reach retirement age. The NI paid by a self-employed person is often higher than that paid by someone on PAYE, if you want a government pension.

Oh come off it durhamjen do you live in the real world?

I am not being insulting to cleaners (window or otherwise) at all, merely stating the obvious.

I don't thinks POGS got it wrong at all. To break even with regards to VAT a "window cleaner" would have to take around £94,798.80 (including vat) to end up with the equivilent £78,999 of someone below the VAT threshold. Mind you I think someone working so close to the threshold would be inviting a visit from HMRC.

DH and I have a company that's now in its 25 year. Life was so much easier when I was the only employee but the growth of rules and regulations and an increase in staff to 32 was very stressful until I got in someone who knew the ropes.
In the early days I did the cleaning myself as I was originally trained in hotel work and cleaning was part of it. To me cleaning is a vital job (although I don't hold this view in my own home quite so much!) for which proper training is required with suitable qualifications. The trouble is that cleaning in this country at least is seen as 'menial' and until that hurdle is crossed it will continue to difficult to recruit good staff.
Pay is certainly an issue but recognised training and qualifications with different grades / promotional prospects may also be worth considering if you don't do this already.

Why do you suggest I do not live in the real world, Gillybob?
I was rounding the figures up or down as I do not know the present VAT fraction, and to make the idea simpler to understand.
I pay my window cleaner £5. My son also pays him £5 to clean a two storey 4 bedroom detached house. Others on here also pay £5.
My figures are correct. It would be difficult for anyone charging that to get up to the VAT threshold, and why should he want to? I always give him a ten pound note and tell him to keep the change, but he will not take it.
He does actually earn £20 per hour round here, not a bad rate, for cleaning four bungalows. His son takes the ladders over the road and cleans the two storey houses. So when the weather is okay, they can get £40 per hour, but that only works up to VAT level if they work 40 hours per week for 50 weeks, which is actually impossible.
I only pay £15 for a cut and blow dry in this village. It was three times as much when I left York 4 years ago.

Durhamjen I think the confusion arose because in an earlier post you say: He charges £5 and I have suggested every year that he puts it up. He does not want to as he is happy not collecting VAT for the taxman.
The response seems to have been based on your window cleaner paying (or rather not wanting to pay) VAT.

Grannyactivist, I have run two businesses. The first I collected VAT for the taxman as the takings were over the threshold. The second I made sure I kept a few thousand under the VAT threshold, so I did not have to charge VAT. I still had a visit from the VAT inspector, just to make sure I was not cheating him.
Gillybob owns a business, an engineering company,and obviously knows exactly what I am talking about. If she is a partner in the business, she will be classed as self-employed. The engineers who work for the business will be employed and have to pay tax through the PAYE system.

If you run a business, it's up to you to control your takings so you either collect VAT for the taxman, or do not because your takings are less than they need to be to charge VAT. If you earn less than the VAT threshold, you cannot charge VAT.
It has been known for people to give invoices with VAT charged even though they advertise that they do not charge VAT.

Thanks anyway, for trying to explain.