You can opt out of the work hours regulations, but even if you don't as a contractor you will be running your own Ltd, so unless you're liable to sue yourself, you'll be fine with 2 weeks holiday which is comparable to the US. Of course you can take more, but as a contractor you get paid per day, so it'll affect your earnings.
Avoiding tax once you're not PAYE is pretty easy, there are loads of loopholes but the government sanctioned method is to take £40k per year at under 20% and leave the rest in the company. If you have a non-working spouce, this becomes £80000. You can also contrib, I believe, £40k to a pension, double again for your spouce and set yourself up for a super early retirement.
If you're open to more risk, there are loan based trust systems that'll get you access to your money a lot quicker. They're currently totally legal but the government does make a lot of noise about shutting them down.
Point being, earnings aren't reflective of wealth in the UK and you can do well here too as sadly, the well off have a lot more opportunities to legally avoid tax.
Avoiding tax once you're not PAYE is pretty easy, there are loads of loopholes but the government sanctioned method is to take £40k per year at under 20% and leave the rest in the company. If you have a non-working spouce, this becomes £80000. You can also contrib, I believe, £40k to a pension, double again for your spouce and set yourself up for a super early retirement.
If you're open to more risk, there are loan based trust systems that'll get you access to your money a lot quicker. They're currently totally legal but the government does make a lot of noise about shutting them down.
Point being, earnings aren't reflective of wealth in the UK and you can do well here too as sadly, the well off have a lot more opportunities to legally avoid tax.