Self-employed form CWF1

CatCat27

Hi all,

I am self-employed and have recently been contacted by a potential new client. I've been full-time self-employed for the past 6 months but have been freelancing (and filing self-assessment tax returns) on top of my previous full-time employment for 4-5 years.

Potential new client has stated that they want me to provide them with "confirmation letter from HRMC [sic] responding to CWF1". However, I have never had a letter from HMRC confirming that I am registered as a sole trader (if I had received this when I first registered 4.5 years ago I would have definitely filed it and it's not in my paperwork stash).... I just filled in the online form 4.5 years ago saying that I was self-employed and I get reminder letters from HMRC once a year to fill in my SA form. Any idea how I should respond or what I should provide potential new client with? Presumably they just want to check that I am definitely self-employed and registered for paying tax but I've never been asked for anything like this from any other clients and not sure how to respond...:o

Dazed_and_confused

It is meaningless and undoubtedly a box ticking exercise by the new client.

Even if you could produce such a letter how does your new client know you hadn't written to HMRC the next day telling them you had stopped being self employed??

ThemeOne

All you can do is ask HMRC if there is any proof of self-employment they can provide, though I'm not sure there is. If they can't give you anything, and you still want the work it'll be a question of trying to find out what's behind the client's request - perhaps, for example, they're worried the work they're proposing might constitute employment and they could be liable for tax and NI. All muddled thinking on their part, obviously, but it depends how much you want the work whether you're prepared to engage with them on this.

CatCat27

Thanks! That is what I was thinking - that they want 'proof' that they are not employing me (although as stated by the poster above this letter wouldn't be proof of that anyway....). But if the client fills out the appropriate online form on the HMRC website correctly themselves (as they would usually do when taking on a new freelancer anyway...) then it will be obvious that I am definitely a freelancer and not an employee (i.e. they won't supply me with any tools, won't give me guaranteed work, won't set defined hours, and I'll be working remotely/will be able to sub-contract the work if I wanted to etc etc) so if they were investigated by HMRC there is no way I could be mistaken for an employee or the client held liable for any of the tax implications of that.. Hm, will reply and say I don't have this paperwork and see what their response is. Sigh.

Annie35

you'll have a UTR number (probably easiest to find it on a previous submission) which is for self employed people, most self employed jobs ive seen ask for this number as proof of SA.