car insurance - second job/self employed

james_786

I currently have a 40-hours-per-week job where I am a PAYE employee. The job is at a single site, I currently use my car to travel to and from my workplace and it is insured for social, domestic, pleasure and commuting. I am looking towards starting a second, weekends-only job as a photographer. At this job, I will be working for a company but I may be expected to register as self-employed for income tax purposes. I am hoping that as my situation is slightly different to the norm (as I understand it most of the company's photographers work there part-time and are freelance photographers the rest of the time and are therefore already self-employed, whereas I am not) I may be able to persuade them to employ me on a PAYE basis, which will obviously solve a lot of problems for me (they do have other employees besides photographers who are on PAYE, so I know they have the facility, however photographers are paid differently to other employees). However until we sort things out I intend to research all possible outcomes so I know where I stand. The job will again be at a single site, so no travelling between different sites, and I intend to use my car to travel to and from the site, so the question is, if I have to register as self employed, will my use of the car still count as commuting? Or will being self-employed now make it business use? If it counts as business, what sort of increase can I expect in my premium? At the moment my annual mileage is around 2000, and my premium is less than £300. I expect the extra mileage travelling to and from the photographer job to be very low, hard to predict exactly but a rough calculation has given me a figure of around 400 miles per year.
Am I correct in assuming that, if this does indeed count as business use, then travelling to and from my main job will still count as personal use? I.e. I'll be looking at 2000 miles personal and 400 miles business mileage.
If I am able to be employed on a PAYE basis, then obviously it will not count as business but do I still need to inform my insurer of the second job? If so what, if any, difference can I expect in my premium in that situation?

dacouch

Unfortunately Insurers have traditionally not liked photographers so be prepared for an increase in premium that may be substantial or that your current Insurers refuse to offer cover.

I assume you're a family / wedding photographer, if this is the case make this very clear to Insurers as some will differentiate between this type of photographer and the type they really don't like which is fashion and advertising

james_786

None of the above actually - I'll be working for a company that runs pleasure flights in vintage aircraft, taking a few photos of the customer in front of the plane and in the cockpit etc. So not sure where that fits in. I'll be working from a single site, not travelling around, so is this likely to count as business use, or commuting? One thing I've found is that certainly as far as the IRS is concerned it's commuting, not business mileage. Whether insurers will agree is another story. That's interesting though about insurers not liking photographers, worth bearing in mind if I ever decide to go into photography full time.

Quentin

Getting business cover won't be expensive (if any extra cost at all), so just expect to have the admin charge to pay for changing cover.


As already posted, adding the part time job to your profile may involve a premium increase on top of the admin charge.

james_786

OK well I need to speak to my insurer at some point but in the meantime I've just done two new quotes on a price comparison website, one with the part-time job and one without, to get a rough idea. The quotes both came out exactly the same, although interestingly higher than the one I got last time I renewed (inflation presumably). If those quotes are anything to go by the premium increase isn't going to be quite as scary as I expected and should hopefully pay for itself fairly quickly with the additional income from the second job. Thanks for the info.

james_786

Spoken to insurer, and they couldn't have been more helpful. Business insurance is required regardless of whether or not I'll be self-employed, as there's a possibility that I might be travelling to both jobs on the same day. However there is NO increase in my premium, and the customer service agent explained that the admin fee only applies if the changes are made over the phone - no admin fee if done online and he even talked me through doing it online! All in all a much less painful experience than I was expecting.