Sole trader advice

77ricky

Hello All

I need a little advice, I am a sole trader Electrician, my wife is changing job due to her health and will be working 10 hours per week in a school, to help her drop in income and to help me with my endless paperwork:) I'd like to pay her £200 per month doing 4 hours per week for me.
What do I need to do to make sure it's done properly with my accounts and tax man etc.
Presumably she would also need to register as self employed and do a self assessment annually and provide me with a invoice monthly for her monthly payment of £200 from me.
Any help would be much appreciated. 

Thanks Ricky 

General_Grant

She could be an employee.   As a sole trader you can employ people (hundreds of them even).

77ricky

Thanks for that grant.
My question is more towards do I need to do any paperwork for this or do I simply get my wife to do a invoice to me every month of which I pay her from and then add these invoices in to my accounts as a expense.
And subsequently she would need to register as self employed and do a self assessment every year.

Pennywise

Unless she actually qualifies under HMRC rules as "self employed", she'll be your employee and you need to set up an employers PAYE scheme and run payroll for her.  You can't just decide you're self employed, the HMRC website has a questionnaire to determine employment status, such as providing her own equipment, working for several firms, level of control you exert over her working conditions, etc etc.  If she's just doing admin/accounts for you, it's highly unlikely she'll qualify as being self employed.