Handyman prices

[The Medway Handyman]

Charging a realistic rate in order to run a business properly & pay your taxes isn't a scam.

[Lobster]

Well if he and the ladder land on the tarmac and he breaks his neck, no problem at all: however, what happens if he decides to cushion his fall by landing on the roof of my new Lamborghini? Or on SWMBO?

David

[PCPaul]

(a) bad (b) good

[Lobster]

How about on SWMBO's Lamborghini then?

[Tim S]

Lobster coughed up some electrons that declared:

Then he'll need his insurance to cover testicular reattachment surgery I would have thought...

[dennis]

Charging £40 ph (about £60k pa) and not being VAT registered like someone said earlier in the thread sounds like a scam though.

[ARWadsworth]

I do not have a SWHBO or a Lamborghini.

Adam

[PCPaul]

Well in that case you are clearly going to be sued for negligence by the handyman when he lands on the drive.

Have you no conscience?

[neverwas]

How so when the VAT registration threshold is currently £68,000 (see eg

[YAPH]

Not charging enough ;-)

[The Medway Handyman]

Threshold is £68k AFAIK. Realistically £40 per hour would prolly come under that.

[The Medway Handyman]

[dennis]

It is if no materials are charged for, however that is just another scam.

[Colin Wilson]

AFAIK he's completely legit - and even at his prices he's having problems finding work at the moment.

He gets a lot of repeat trade and word of mouth recommendations, but with money being tight everywhere, it's not an easy way to make a living right now...

[The Medway Handyman]

I'd disagree. I'm fully booked until the 16 July at the moment and have new jobs coming in every day. At prices more than double what he is charging.

Marketing is the key.

[The Medway Handyman]

WTF are you on about now?

If you 'charge' £40 per hour you can't earn £1600 for a 40 hour week trust me. What with travel, picking up materials etc you can actually bill your customers for about 30 hours in a 40 hour week. That would be £1200 or £62K a year for 52 weeks. Given holidays & bank holidays, time taken to visit acountants etc you can reduce that to £57K.

You can mark up some materials but not all. People are very aware or the cost of fence panels, laminate flooring etc & the majority buy the items for you to fit.

You can earn a good living doing this, if you do it properly, but you aint ever gonna drive a roller.

[dmc]

Nothing you couldn't knock the dent out of, and then with a bit of Tcut and some buffing it'd be as good as new.

The lambo would be harder to fix though :-/

[dennis]

Not being very bright then?

But do you add them to the turnover so you (may) exceed the VAT threshold or do you scam by making the customer buy the goods?

[The Medway Handyman]

If I can make a decent mark up on the materials e.g. decking then I buy it, so its added to my turnover. If I can't earn a decent mark up e.g. cheap laminate flooring then I tell the customer to buy it. No point in adding to my turnover without a margin.

If its a part I carry on the van e.g a toilet siphon, I sell it on with a mark up. Very often the client will have already bought the item e.g. flatpack.

What I fail to see is any scam, just business sense.

[neverwas]

You are right about turnover if the materials are the handyman's and he then sells them to the customer. But a perfectly legitimate way to avoid crossing the threshold is to get the customer to buy the materials (albeit possibly with the handyman acting as agent). Clearly that would not be practicable for small items the handyman carries and uses day by day such as the odd screw or length of cable. But even just £8,000 covers a lot of such things.

Why do you say that is a scam? Are you thinking of the handyman concealing from the customer his commission from the merchant?