Self Employment as Electrician Tax questions

sammyk100

Hi my partner is starting a new job where he will be going to college one day a week to study as an electrician then he will be going to work for a friends company. Who will be paying him a set amount each week. Now his friend mentioned that he should go self employed and he will pay us the set amount and we will pay the tax and NI. But looking into it am I understand we pay both the NI class 2 & 4 but his friend would have to deduct 20% under the CIS scheme and do the return every month. But then I have read that really my partner is not really self employed because he is getting paid a weekly rate so should his friend just take him on as an employee and then pay his tax and ni for him. We really aren't sure what we should be doing any help is appreciated??

simplydevine05

He will be an employee if he will be doing work as told by his friend and if it is done the way his friend wants it done. It sounds like his friend is trying to get around the paperwork and he will have to have insurance too and other things. If you type "employed or self employed" into a search engine you'll find lots of guides that you can scan through that bullet point the differences between being self employed or employed. It is easy to work out based on what work he is expected to do.

podperson

It sounds like the friend is trying to avoid having to sort out the tax and NI but as you say he will probably have to pay CIS (is he registered on this?) which imo is more hassle. Also I would check up on the regulations as I think something was brought in to try and stop this exact thing, whereas if a contractor only does work for one company and does set hours every week for them etc then he is actually classed as 'employed' by them anyway.