employer taking employers NI from my pay

doctor40 · 12 July 2017 at 10:14PM

hi, I wonder if anyone can help? I am self employed and work as a GP locum. One of the NHS areas in which I work has decided to make all of their locums "employed" to avoid issues with the taxman. When I take up a locum job, I agree a fee with the practice in question. I then am paid gross, and pay tax etc via self assessment.

With the switch the employee status, I am now paid via PAYE. However the employer has deducted tax and both employers and employees NI. Their explanation....that I am paid a contracted rate and they need to make all of the necessary deductions from this, and I get whats left. So they have taken off £300 to pay employers NI.

We were told about this change by a practice manager in March. I never received any official letter re this, although the practice manager got one, and has now passed it to me. I therefore didn't agree to the changes, or the deduction, and certainly didn't sign anything. The letter says "we need to deduct employment tax and NI" not specifying which.

I also did the work at the end of March and the payment was made in May, so the work was done under the old rules and the payment made under the new rules, but again it did say in the letter I didn't see until today, that all payments made after April would be made under the new system "regardless of when the work was done". Can they do this? Again bearing in mind I didn't agree to this.

SOrry it's confusing!

thanks

General_Grant · 12 July 2017 at 10:55PM

As a self-employed person, did you issue terms of business and submit invoices?

jobbingmusician · 12 July 2017 at 11:36PM

How is this relevant? Things worked when s/he was self-employed, it's since the OP became an employed person that problems have started.

If you are employed, you should be issued with a statement of T & C. My belief is that no, they can't do this as it is not an authorised deduction, but I am no expert....

p00hsticks · 13 July 2017 at 12:07AM

this from the BMA seems to suggest that it is correct that employers NI is deducted

What must an engager/agency do if the above tool says the locum is inside IR35?
If the above tool says the worker falls inside IR35 for this engagement then they should be paid through the organisation’s payroll and tax and NI deducted at source. As an employer, the engager/agency will also then have to add 13.8% employer NI for all earnings above £156 per week in line with HMRC NI bandings. They would also have to generate payslips and a P60 end-of-year certificate for the worker as appropriate.
The locum is also free to only accept the engagement subject to satisfactory employment terms, which would need to be negotiated.

(taken from
https://www.bma.org.uk/connecting-doctors/the_practice/b/weblog/posts/a-locum-s-guide-to-the-changes-to-ir35-legislation )

Xbigman · 13 July 2017 at 12:49AM

I read that to mean that if employed through a third party the third party is the one who pays employers NI and they should add it to their bill.
However, this is complicated and needs professional advice.

Darren

TyreLever · 13 July 2017 at 3:30AM

Xbigman wrote: »

I read that to mean that if employed through a third party the third party is the one who pays employers NI and they should add it to their bill.
However, this is complicated and needs professional advice.

Darren

Isn't this supposed to be an expert forum tho? Or is the name misleading?

sangie595 · 13 July 2017 at 7:08AM

TyreLever wrote: »

Isn't this supposed to be an expert forum tho? Or is the name misleading?

Where does it say that this is an "expert" forum.. And whatever an "expert" is, there are so many variations and degrees of information that nobody could get it right every time - or even know about absolutely everything.

OP, I would imagine this is what your BMA membership is for - they have legal advice available. What is being done is not, in itself, unlawful - it seems that they are operating a form of "umbrella", which is common amongst some employment agencies (and the NHS does have an internal employment agency, so could operate an umbrella scheme). But whether this is the case here depends upon a range of pieces of information that we do not have.

getmore4less · 13 July 2017 at 8:18AM

Put your rates up, if your net is going down.

They should also be taking out holiday pay and/or itemizing that separately under PAYE.

Alter_ego · 13 July 2017 at 8:28AM

getmore4less wrote: »

Put your rates up, if your net is going down.
.

Employees cannot do that.

getmore4less · 13 July 2017 at 8:47AM

Alter_ego wrote: »

Employees cannot do that.

They are not a real employee,

Locums really operate as temp contractors so can decide what rates are acceptable for each job as they said in their first post

When I take up a locum job, I agree a fee with the practice in question.

Flugelhorn · 13 July 2017 at 8:55AM

doctors.net and various Facebook Fora have been discussing this.

Locums can put up their rates to cover the changes / decide if they want to carry on etc etc

One of the issues here (and elsewhere) was the payment of invoices for work done in March and how that was treated differently.

I don't think they can take employer's NI from you, they have to pay that - they can take employee's NI and if you overpay through the year you can get that back (happens with multiple jobs).

employer taking employers NI from my pay

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free