If you have any concerns in relation to a service offering from any of our Approved Providers please let us know.

There are six areas that Professional Passport has developed compliance review standards for:

• Umbrella - both with and without expenses
• Professional Employment Organisations [PEO]
• Joint Employment
• CIS
• Accountancy
• Agency Payroll Bureau

As important as the services we can review are the services we cannot.

Another unique aspect of the Professional Passport compliance standards is that we must review all service offerings by the provider, or an associate. If any of these services meet our 'Fail' criteria we would be unable to review any aspect of that provider.

This is further supported by the terms and conditions of Provider Membership. If we received evidence of a provider offering any service outside the terms of their compliance review their membership would be immediately suspended.

The service offerings we are unable to consider include:

• Elective Deduction Model
  Where workers are 'self-employed' and elect to pay PAYE taxes. This arrangement is often used for low paid workers and whilst there are many variations common features would include a failure to pay holiday pay, ignoring NMW requirements and claiming of expenses that would otherwise be prevented.
  
  
• Pay Day by Pay Day
  Was common at one stage but now seems less so. In this arrangement expenses were offset for tax relief which often resulted in workers receiving less than NMW.
  
  
• Mini Umbrella
  Contrived arrangements to access the employers NI relief and, in some cases, VAT FRS.
  
  
• Arrangements with 'Loans'
  Seeking to avoid tax on income by categorising some of the income as a loan, annuity, shares, a capital advance involving mutual, joint or co-ownership, or a payment derived from a revolving line of credit facility, or some other non-taxable form. We still see these offered with false promises of compliance.
  
  
• Any arrangement that includes an element of pay from offshore
  This is an area that regularly has new arrangements emerging with false claims of compliance.
  
  
• Umbrella companies relying on the Nurses Agency VAT Concession
  HMRC has made it clear to Professional Passport that this concession is not available to umbrella providers.