Advice on self employed status please.

SANDYLODGE

My OH has recently set up as a self employed gardener, working a couple of days a week for people who pay the money directly to her.

She also knows someone else who is a gardener who has too much work so she has started to do work for a couple of his clients each week.
For these jobs she keeps a record of the hours that she does then invoices him at the end of the month and he pays her for the hours. (So those clients pay this other gardener then he pays my OH).

My question is does this work still count as self employed? She is still using her own tools and everything it's just that she gets paid for these other jobs by this other gardener.

Any advice much appreciated.

D.

Bean_Counter

Have a look at this HMRC booklet. It is easy to read and let you apply your own circumstances to the 'tests'.

Let me know if you need more info.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/pdfs/ir56.pdf

yummymummy79

Sounds like it could be sub contracting. My OH does this for computer companies, customer makes appt with company, they call him, he does the job, customer pays company, he invoices company for each job on a weekly basis. He uses his own equipment etc so it does sound like a similar scenario.

Bean_Counter

yummymummy79 wrote: »

Sounds like it could be sub contracting. My OH does this for computer companies, customer makes appt with company, they call him, he does the job, customer pays company, he invoices company for each job on a weekly basis. He uses his own equipment etc so it does sound like a similar scenario.

I'm not so sure. I work in the construction industry and come across this a lot.

In this example, there are quite a few elements that would indicate she is an employee, such as charging an hourly rate, no financial risk, no substitution etc.

There are also elements indicating self-employment, such as ability to turn down work, working for other people, presumably having to rectify unsatisfactory in own time etc.

On balance it might sway towards self-employment. If she could invoice a fixed rate for the job rather than just an hourly rate (even if it was based on an hourly rate, just don't put it on the invoice), that might enough to clinch it as self-employment for me.

No doubt someone will be along shortly to disagree!