Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys

[Unitof1]

all of the above and more.

but what I want to know which nobody is telling is what do you charge VAT for when you are an archaeologist.

I am like one of these http://idox.bathnes.gov.uk/WAM/doc/BackG...ageCount=5
but I know that there are big boys out there who pay vat, or rather did not used to charge vat because they thought they did not have too because what but now it turns out that they do because what. I would like to know if its for writting on a context sheet or any other funny odd thing that archaeologists do. Head hits brick

[trowelfodder]

This is a really interesting thread, and in a way highlights one of the big problems we have in archaeology - how it is funded. And I do completely understand Martins point that it is not taking money/jobs from archaeologists as there is not the funding available to pay them but there is funding available for training volunteers. This would seem a very difficult situation to find yourself in and I have to admit a very creative way around a problem, but is it really that different to the likes of Tesco and Co using jobseekers on "apprenticships" rather than paying staff.

And Unit this thread is not about GGAT and any big VAT bill they may or may not have, whichever HER is involved and whether or not they are a trust is not the issue. !

[Martin Locock]

The trust issue does have relevance: technically nowhere in our charitable aims does it say that there should be paid staff - it would theoretically be possible for all its aims to be achieved without employees. Of course always has had staff, but philosophically employing staff can never become the raison d'etre.

The issue of apprenticeships and internships and their impact on early career archaeologists is less relevant: our experience of our Arfordir coastal erosion management project which trained groups of volunteers to undertake regular site visits has shown that there is a pool of people out there who are interested in archaeology are willing to give up some of their time to help, without any expectation that this is a pathway to a professional post.

On the broader issue of funding for HERs, to me the simplest solution would be for them to become a statutory duty paid for by taxes. There are reasons why this hasn't happened, political or Political, and instead there is a patchwork of funding streams that delivers some sort of service - and that funding comes with a set of priorities that would not necessarily be ours if we were given a free hand. That's not a complaint, just an observation.

[trowelfodder]

"The issue of apprenticeships and internships and their impact on early career archaeologists is less relevant"

I would have to disagree here - HER experience is something that is frequently asked for in job adverts and now tasks that would have been at an entry level in this area have been removed. Technically any job in archaeology could be done by volunteers if they were trained so are we now to simply accept that from now on Trusts are going to move more and more into only working with volunteers.

It is not an issue specific to this post, or indeed this profession but the slow attrition of jobs and the downgrading of pay, longer working hours being told to be grateful for everything we have is really toxic long term. I completely see your point about working with the situation as it exists and taking bits and pieces from here and there to provide whatever you can.

(and when i said being a trust or not wasnt relevant I meant regarding the VAT bill that GGAT appears not to have paid as the issue that Unit is repeating)

[Bodger51]

I agree with Uo1 on the level of importance and significance that should be considered for Zero VAT.

However my concerns are not quite the same as how Uo1 is depicting them at the surface level.

When we consider the Zero VAT factor we have to ask the principle issue of whether the activities are assigned at either the Logistical Capacitance or Logistical Supportive scales, where the impact within Organisational Budgetary allotments underlines the organisational performance.
Not just as the Work Flow management, but to incorporate the Logistical Flow management too.

Where this comes in, is at the Trustee level where Quarterly meetings are evidently insufficient, to support potential budgetary pitfalls.

Working on the below sums Trustee consideration can be 3 times longer than breech intervention requirements, at the contractual level, whilst at the organisational level, a hiring policy effects the breech limits, where the selection process can be loaded.


Logistical Capacitance:
Working within the contractual environ, where if say you had 5 archaeological sites for a month, that alone would breech Budget level for Trustee considerations.

This would be on the basis of employing 10 people per site to work in-office, on-site and as specialists.

This equates to over ?50,000 at the work-flow level, whilst logistical support is assumed to be able to be drawn from pre-existing support structures.


Logistical Support:
Alternatively employing say 200 people for a year, would equate to ?250 per person per annum, or ?5 per week (an interesting sum).

Whilst employing 40 people the same process would equate to a 3 Week pay packet for per person, over the course of a year. Potentially based upon the period in which people would focus their time by volunteering on training excavations and potentially being paid for their efforts.


In my experience of working within Logistical Capacitance, individuals fall by the wayside, whilst hiring policy is culturally transformative and plainly too independent of Trustee interest for the boards interest in organisational oversight.

As such if you do not operate within the umbrella of operational Trustees’ then you can find yourself as isolated from the supportive Trustee Culture, not Corporate Culture, which may not be down to elections, but invitations.


I’d say if you work in a Charity and never met a Trustee of Patron, then the problem is beyond solving outside of job descriptions, which may not support Charity Status activities by negligible inactive reference or absence.

I worked in archaeology for while and I never ONCE saw or met a Trustee, in any form of walk around.
As such I think it shows the level of disparity between the stakeholders and the influence they have upon determining Profit to Charity ratios.

:face-topic:
In returning to the Topic are they looking for new volunteer sub-committee trustees, or will it remain tacit NON-voted disinterest, or patron charged?
B)

Would have made sense if there was any support.
Too late now to cry over spilt milk

So don't worry about it

[Martin Locock]

".

(and when i said being a trust or not wasnt relevant I meant regarding the VAT bill that GGAT appears not to have paid as the issue that Unit is repeating)

Sorry I misunderstood this - I've put Unit on the ignore list.http://www.bajrfed.co.uk/images/smilies/...le-big.png

I don't think that there is a move towards using volunteers by the Trusts - there have always been volunteers. I think volunteering is becoming more formalised, which certainly provides more of mutual benefit.

[Unitof1]

Bodger I am sure that the trustees of gwent imagine that logistical capacitance and its supportive scales as well as organisational budgetary allotments were their ideas and were presumably developed between the years 1985 to 2009. I imagine that right now they have their voiluteers working on more ingenius methods to find ways to pay tax on things that you did not know you had lost or indeed once you had found it were not sure what it was. Take a neolithic blade for instance: input vat unknown, age mostly based on rubbing it with thumb and finger and yet we call it neo but then say that it is really old. I have to say though that I do like the idea that you take the cost of the archaeology add all the taxes that you can find and then divide it by the number of things that you have found to get a value for accounting purpose for the objects. For me this is what organisation budgetary allotments is all about. I used it the other day when a little old lady asked what was the best thing that I had ever found which turned out to be coincidental for her because as it happened on that particular day the only thing that I could be bothered to pick up was something that I decided was a microlith. You can see where I am coming from. The only area in the account that I was a bit worried about was weather and if I should include in the full account the beacon butties and tea which the little old lady insisted that I take. When I told the little old lady what the microlith was worth and how long it had kept is value she did demand to know who owned the object which I thought I had told her in my chatup. When she realised that it belonged to her and was worth exactly what she had paid to for me to find it for her she demanded that I give it to her. Which I did but fell into the old culturally transformative problem of once the microlith was out of my hands it no longer was a micrlith but anything that she wanted it to be and I now had the mind boggoling budgetary alloting of dividing all fees and taxex by a big fat ZERO and having to go through all those arguments about whats behind the brickwall at the edge of the universe and does it matter if you can never leave the centre of it anyway. But these things keep you warm and also left me with the problem of if I did not find anything what was I charging the little old lady for. It appears that it is for standing with the not so odd bit of bending over which you do as it has more possibilities than standing up. Still dont know if I am missing out on some input VAT on that as well. and will never know because the grand old trustee who presumably told the trust to register for vat has put me on the invivble list because he only wants to talk about the volunteer sub-committee trustees and knows that if he met me in a field I would outstand him

[Marcus Brody]

Still dont know if I am missing out on some input VAT on that as well. and will never know because the grand old trustee who presumably told the trust to register for vat has put me on the invivble list because he only wants to talk about the volunteer sub-committee trustees and knows that if he met me in a field I would outstand him

He's put you on the invisible list because you keep writing long incomprehensible posts that are off the topic of the thread, and I can't say I blame him for it. As I said back on page 2, if you want to discuss VAT, start a new thread on that topic.

[Dinosaur]

Can we have a BAJR guide to VAT please?

[Wax]

Can we have a BAJR guide to VAT please?

Second that, it's a pretty large tax and it might be worth knowing what's the best way of approaching it for a freelance archaeologist (go on Unit start a VAT thread)