Ravi_s said:
Contractor here.. I advise to to get reasonably priced local chartered accountant. At least they know what their doing and can help if the sh*t hits the fan, rather then chatting to random person over the internet. You can normally negotiate a yearly figure especially if they are small or family run business.
I second this, I walked into such a place almost 10 years ago saying I was thinking of doing what you're thinking of, and walked out with a limited company, VAT registered, bank account etc pretty much all sorted, with a lot less hassle than I expected. I pay on average more than the £130/month but that's more than saved in tax efficiency and I spend the time I'm not doing my accounts & tax earning the money to cover paying someone else to do it
Although I will say our intention was to provide services to many businesses rather than contract, we set up to contract just in case it was needed, and some contracting was indeed done, it was varied and ad-hoc enough to not to have to consider IR35 applying at all.
My understanding is there is a lot of regulation coming in to just make what was previously arguable just plain disallowed. A lot of contractors are going umbrella and paying full PAYE, accounting for holiday pay etc to avoid any issues. There must be something in that, but I'm not really that familiar with it all any more to know.
All in all it depends on what you're doing and the kind of time demands and money involved.