can both me and my partner be self employed?

red_machenka

Just wanted some info please...

I have a small dog grooming business therefore I am already self employed my partner currently looks after our 2 children (9months and 6 years) and does not work.

He wants to come and work with me part time (9.30 till 2.30pm only on school days and not during school holidays etc) can he work with me as a self employed person or will I have to take him on as an employee?

Thank you

steve1980

If he is free to take up other work then he can be SE. Otherwise no, you would have to employ him.

Annisele

Alternatively you could go into partnership - but make sure you understand what the consequences are before you do.

paulwf

I would speak to your accountant about what will be most cost effective, you might get to save lots of money. If you receive any benefits popping over to the benefits board might also be a good idea.

Make sure you use up his tax free allowance and put as much through as expenses as is legitimate

red_machenka

what do you mean... "free to take up other work"?

I have no intention of tying him to the grooming table lol.

Savvy_Sue

red_machenka wrote: »

what do you mean... "free to take up other work"?

I have no intention of tying him to the grooming table lol.

The thing is that it's not necessarily your decision whether he's s/e or should be your employee. Take a look at this HMRC page to see what I mean.

I rather suspect that you'd either need to consider the partnership idea, or employ him, because you only want him there when you've got work, presumably, and presumably also you either have too much work to do alone OR he'll do some to give you time to do other things.

If you go for partnership, I believe it's recommended that you do NOT go for a 50/50 split. You need one of you to have the majority vote, in case (surely not!) you ever disagree!

Probably a summary of what it means on the Businesslink site.

vialdana

I believe he could register as self employed and then you'd sub contract jobs to him when you required his services - effectively your company would buy the services of his company - this way he'd be responsible for paying his own Tax and NI, and you would just be paying another company in the usual way you would for anything your company purchased.

Auntie-Dolly

My Hubby & I are both registered as self employed and have an informal partnership whereby the profits from our business are split in the most tax efficient way between us.

martindow

Auntie-Dolly wrote: »

My Hubby & I are both registered as self employed and have an informal partnership whereby the profits from our business are split in the most tax efficient way between us.

Hmm, not too sure about this. I think HMRC might want to see some evidence that the split matched the hours and work that the partners carry out if they ever came checking.

Auntie-Dolly

Nonsense - an 'informal partnership' is an official tax status. We have a UTR for the business and are both registered as partners. We have run our business this way for 8+ years. It is quite legitimate.