The aim of Brookfield is to avoid social security payments to the HMRS. It's also a well known fact that Brookfield is in fact owned by the same shareholders as Ryanair. In fact, Mr. Declan used to work for Ryanair.
When he quit Ryanair that's when Brookfield was born. Here's the beauty of the scheme. Because Ryanair was growing so quickly it needed more pilots and cabin crew. If they were to hire all those people on a Ryanair contract, Ryanair would have to pay the social security, pension contributions and healthcare contributions to the Irish government. Add to that such an enormous administration requires a lot of effort, people (read: money) to run.
Because the Irish Revenue Service is notoriously inefficient it took them years to figure out that strangely enough, Ryanair kept expanding at a rate of more than 50 aircraft per year, however magically the amount of Ryanair employees remained the same.
That's when the Irish Revenue figured out that something was amiss. They investigated Ryanair at Dublin airport, the only place where the irish have legal power, and told Ryanair off.
Up to this point the Brookfield contracts were a joke. They did not check where your income was going and so you had a bunch of people who were effectively cashing in more than €10,000 a month without paying any taxes.
At this point Ryanair realised they had to thrown a bone for the irish Revenue. That's when they adjusted their contracts into the form they come in today. Where you are forced to join a ltd. company run by on of 3 friendly accountant firms in Dublin.
The advantage for Ryanair.
1) Because your income flows into an Irish company, you are forced to pay taxes in Ireland. This pleases the Irish Revenue and keeps them off Ryanair's back.
2) Because your income flows into your own company you become responsible for your own social security, healthcare and such.
3) 3% reduction of your pay flows directly back to Brookfield. Think about it. The cost to run your company for you is fixed. Regardless of your income. Strangely enough though, the higher your income, the larger the 3% of that income will be.
By the way. All brookfield payments originate from Gibraltar.
edit: Oh and by the way, important side-note.
When you enter into the CXC system you're a director of the company holding 33% shares. Mind you, not 33.333..%! So there's 3 pilots owning 99% of the company and here it comes. 1% of the company is owned by CXC.
This means that even if 3 pilots decide to band together they still have to deal with CXC as a shareholder in their company. Good luck explaining that to your local banker trying to get a mortgage.
"Yes sir. My main income originates from a foreign company which I'm not even majority shareholder of.". He's going to have a field day with you.
Last edited by d105; 11th Jan 2011 at 23:02.