Alrighty pablo!
Long time no speak! Several routes you can go down if a contractor however it will depend if you are working for only one company. If its more than one, ltd company is the way to go, recieving a salary of £6k a year with no tax deductions, collecting director dividends up to £42k paying very little tax on that and charging everything work related to the company and claiming that back so you can make quite a substantial amount of money!
You'll find loads that do it that way however they only work for 1 company it puts them in breach of IR35. Do a search on the net for the Dragonfly case (not aviation related but this is what the IR are trying to clamp down on) and you'll see how it can go wrong.
The IR are coming down heavily on aviation at the mo looking for reciepts for everything to prove that the allowences that are in place are justified! With Gordon Brown wanting to claw back as much money through tax as possible to pay for bailing out the banks I would be very wary to go down this route however there is a chance they may not back back date the tax so its a gamble!
Self employed is the other way, collecting your money, putting some passed for tax and NI. Oh and thats if you wanna pay class 1 NI. You can claim back deductions for various things like anr headsets if your company dont have them, replacment uniform (not intial uniform purchase), hotels and transport when working out of base, car parking to name a few!
I know your a semi clever lad
so have prob seen this but if not check it out.
Airline pilots: industry wide FRE for 2006/07 onwards: summary
There are 2 things guaranteed in life, death and paying taxes so I personally dont understand why people try to get away not paying any. With that get a good accountant, they are worth their weight in gold and will get the best in terms of deductions from your tax bill.
As for myself I went down the self employed route and have put away half of my expected 18k tax bill next year. If its less than that I'm away on holiday with the change!
Oh there is also a parasol company which you could work through but again is in a very grey area!
kempus