Financial Requirements question on SET-M

[sijokurian]

Hello All,

I am preparing to apply for SET-M next month. My sponsor is a british citizen. I am working as a consultant through my Limited company. I was planning to use Category F for the application. Since the document requirements for Category F is bit excessive, I am trying to see if I could use Category B through my sponsor. Our case for using Category B is as below.

My sponsor changed jobs within last 6 months. So we cant use Category A. For category B, our time period would be April 2017- Apr 2018 as my appointment is on 19th May. My sponsor worked as a permanent employee with company XXX during April 2017- July 2017 and her earnings from that period is £10000. In July she got redundant and lost her job. Then she worked as a contractor with Company YYY for 6 months i.e Aug 17- Jan 18. During this period she worked as an employee through my limited company to take that assignment and withdrew a very low salary and for that 6 months , she took a salary of £4200. From Feb-18 she become a permanent employee with Company YYY on annual salary of £42000. So for Feb,Mar and Apr 18 her total salary earnings would be around £10500. Her current company can provide a letter for those 6 months in which she worked as a contractor for them.

Can we apply in Category B on my partners income. Her total salaried income from last 12 months would be around £24000. I am bit confused as she worked as a contractor through my limited company for the first 6 months of her employment with Company YYY.

If we could use Category B, I can avoid using Category F and those excessive documents requirements.

Requesting for guidance.
Thanks,
Sijo

[seagul]

Unless your company has massive turn over or has a big fame, convincing to HO will be almost impossible that it's a bonafide bunsiness where your husband working in your company and he will use same income to support you.

[sijokurian]

My sponsor was working as a contractor for 6 months and for that time frame she was the employee of my company. To work as a contractor you need to be have limited or umbrella company. Since we already have one we used that one. My sponsor employed with the same client but as a permanent employee now.

Also if we remove the pay earnings from the contract time still in last 12 months her earnings can exceed £18600. So this would still not an option.

[sijokurian]

Unless your company has massive turn over or has a big fame, convincing to HO will be almost impossible that it's a bonafide bunsiness where your husband working in your company and he will use same income to support you.

Thanks Seagul. Looks like I have confused you. I am the applicant and my wife is the sponsor. Also she is not working in my limited company. She is working as a permanent employee with a good technology company since Jan'18 on an annual salary of 42K. Before becoming permanent she worked for that same company as a Consultant (IT Contractor). To work as a contractor you would either need to start your own limited company or worked under an umbrella company. Since I already had a limited company we took that assignment through our limited company. Hope this explains the situation. So for that 6 months her salaried income was less , because we took only a minimal amount as salary to reduce tax/NI etc.

[sijokurian]

Apologies for the long post J

An update on my application. Since I have observed few discrepancies with my sponsor’s P60 I have finally decided to apply via Cat F using the income from my Limited company. However, I have taken an earnings statement from HMRC for my partner to keep that as a backup option.

My appointment was on 19th May Saturday 10:50 AM at Croydon PSC. Myself, Wife (sponsor) and our 3-year-old girl reached around 10:15 AM. Security people were pleasant and they allowed us to go inside 30 mins earlier than our appointment time. We did the normal security checks and got inside around 10:20. But reception was only allowing the applicants to register at the appointment time. So, we have waited till 10:50AM to get the token number. We took the token and waited for further 45 mins to get called for case registration. Lady at the desk entered our details and collected all the documents and put all documents and photo copies in an envelope. We were asked to remove all the bindings and paper clips. Bio metric was done very quickly and we handed over the document set to the person in the biometric counter.

We waited for long time for our case to move from Awaiting to Under consideration. After couple of hours, I have got a call from a Private Number. I assumed it would be from the UKVI, caller introduced himself as from UKVI. Since I was going through Cat -F, I had large number of documents. He was looking for details on which documents he need to take copies. He asked me to come to Counter:43. I reached there quickly and I was greeted by a nice person. He handed over all the documents and asked me to take the originals (for which I have given copies). I have taken all my originals back and told him I haven’t taken copies for bank statements and other documents which are printed by myself. He asked whether he can keep all the documents except the one in originals which he returned to me. I agreed to that and I have started to arrange the documents, he said its already checked and I don’t need to worry about that. I didn’t know at that time that he is the actual case worker who was handling my application. I had thought its only for to arrange the documents to present to case worker. He told me he is the case worker and it shouldn’t take more time now. I went back to waiting are. After an hour, my number was called and told that my application is approved. Such a big relief it was.

I have read many times that Cat F would be the difficult option to succeed. Hence, I have tried to prepare the application as best as I can do. I had prepared a Financial Overview letter and Evidence letter along with the documents. I don’t know whether this helped him or not. I felt it was necessary because of the large set of documents. I am happy to attach the letters if anyone needs it.

I have received my BRP card as well today.