I'm a British citizen, and have been living in Italy for the past 17 years?

Question

My husband is Italian and has a building company. Because there is so much bureaucracy and greasing of palms just to be able to earn a decent living we want to leave everything here and start up in England, We would like any advice on starting up a small business, and maybe importing Italian materials to work with, any advice?

Answer 1

Hmmm - the construction industry in this country is suffering at the moment it has to be said so it might not be the best time.

And I should point out that there is an awful lot of palm greasing here too. The construction insustry is almost as corrupt as the government!

You mention italian materials - do you mean special materials that could be used on luxury properties and that sort of thing? You may be better considering a business which imports and sells those materials first and then when the industry is back on its feet then branching off into actual building again.

Good luck anyway (and if you need anyone to do your books let me know!)

Answer 2

The process of starting up a business in the UK is very straight forward, whichever legal structure you want to use.

There is a free new business startup guide on my website at http://www.jtdcertax.co.uk/business_cent... Essentially we have a very liberal entrepreneurial system here and you just get on with it.

However, in the building trades there are two things you need to be aware of and to consider over and above the 'normal' business issues.

Firstly, you need to make sure you operate the Construction Industry Scheme properly, and given the length of time you have been out of the UK I would suggest you get an accountant to help you with it. The CIS is basically a special way the government uses to collect tax from people in the building trades because of the generally contract and itinerant nature of their work. details can be found at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cis/cis-intro.htm

You will also need to make sure that you understand the specific training requirements of the sector. For example, many sites won't let workers on without an appropriate card to prove their skills. And this is set to increase as we approach the industry wide deadline for a fully qualified workforce of 2010. Details of the card scheme can be found at http://www.citb.co.uk/cardschemes/

More importantly, if your wages bill is over £76,000 you will have to pay a levy to the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) - which you basically get back if you train your workforce properly. See http://www.citb.co.uk/citblevy/ for details.

Importing stuff from Italy can work - there is a demand for high quality materials even in the current economic climate, although you will have to carefully target your marketing and so on. You will also need to become familiar with import/export and intra-European VAT rules - but again a good accountant will help you, but if you want to read about it go to http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPorta...

If you want to contact a business that imports stuff from Italy (admitedly wine and food, not building materials), contact http://www.canaimport.co.uk/

Oh, and if I can be of any help, please contact me at www.jtdcertax.co.uk as I am an accountant

Answer 3

Not the best time to be moving to England to start a business as the country is having a problem at the moment and some businesses are failing, normally I would say its a good idea as a lot of goods from Italy go well here but if I were you I would hold fire for another year or so.