Freelance/consultant, is self-employed best?

PlutoinCapricorn

Just notify HMRC that you have some additional, taxable income to declare: if it is a one-off, they will not require you to register as self employed.

As you are realising, setting up the sort of structure that a senior consultant with many clients would use is overkill. Professional Indemnity insurance is for lawyers and financial advisors whose clients could lose a fortune of given bad advice. Public Liability is advised for people who give Botox injections or install bathrooms, but is not always essential. What are the chances that you could do any damage, and then how likely are you to be sued?

You are right about IR35 resulting from people, often computer programmers, who arranged with their employers to carry on working for them on a self-employed basis. This is abuse of the system on both sides: employers have responsibilities and the self employed have risks that should not be avoided in this way.

It would be interesting to hear more about this work: it all sounds rather vague.

Casual workers and temps are often taken on to do a specific piece of work.

KiKi

thinkingaboutit wrote: »

It strikes me a bit odd as I've read many times on reports disclaimers of such nature that absolve the author of all responsibility and that usually suffices to cover them. Don't you think that some kind of signed agreement like Hammyman suggested could absolve me of any repercussions?

If you have a contract to that effect, fair enough (and Hammyman would know more about that than me). But sticking a one-liner in an email is not a good idea!

Lots of people work without insurance, and if you're only going to get a couple of hundred quid from it then I can understand your position. Sorry, I admit that I missed that you were doing work experience, which does make the situation rather different.

Either way, I hope you enjoy the work.
KiKi

thinkingaboutit

PlutoinCapricorn wrote: »

Just notify HMRC that you have some additional, taxable income to declare: if it is a one-off, they will not require you to register as self employed.

But what would the company's position be in that case? They can't have someone who is not their employee nor a consultant or otherwise under some sort of contract doing work for them, can they?