Some haulage companies may be deliberately offering spurious advice to so-called ‘self-employed drivers’ more or less their tax liability status. Don’t drop for that!
A few disreputable haulage companies are offering extremely dubious tax status advice to people notionally regarded as ‘self-employed drivers’.
In some cases their advice may be wrong due to ignorance, but in others they are purposefully irritating to offload their tax and NI liabilities onto beatific drivers. The results for the drivers themselves could be severe and concern badly affect next HMRC.
What’s Going On?
If you’re a company organization a fleet of vehicles and employing drivers, then a fair component of your cost base arises from your employee expenses. Any of those you can offload, including the responsibility to combined and pay tax and NI for those employees, is going to keep you money, grow old and effort.
Some haulage companies are in view of that aggravating to persuade drivers to begin on the order of themselves as subconscious ‘self-employed’ in order to condense their costs and thereby permit them to pay for belittle prices in this extremely competitive industry.
What’s Wrong?
The difficulty is that HMRC (aka the Tax Office) doesn’t take that an individual driving vehicles for option company is, typically, ‘self-employed’. They are extremely up to date of the try of some employers to bypass mandatory contributions in such a fashion.
There is furthermore a health and safety issue, as some employers aren’t paying the required employer’s liability insurance premiums they should and covering their employees accordingly.
HMRC believe a very dim view of schemes where a company tries to characterize their employees as ‘self-employed’, therefore some haulage companies are maddening to behave roughly that by offering inappropriate advice to individual drivers to “work on a self-employed basis” even subsequent to such an substitute isn’t entre to them.
Top Tips to protect Your Interests
If you are a driver thinking of going self-employed based on advice from a potential customer, here are some top tips to keep in mind:
• Your potential customer is NOT accountable for your tax affairs. YOU ARE! So, discuss your exact matter following HMRC and get the facts from the horse’s mouth therefore to speak.
• That thesame customer is on utterly NOT an impartial tax advisor. Their interests and yours are not one and the similar in this respect.
• Typically, HMRC will not take your status as being self-employed if you steer for unusual company using their vehicles and functioning licences etc.
• You can moreover be fairly determined that the thesame will apply even if you steer for several rotate haulage companies below the same auspices as above.
• In order to be considered self-employed, you will dependence to be the registered owner of your own vehicle and have vigorous licences and insurance in your own post or that of your own company. Don’t hear to any advice to the contrary unless it comes from HMRC or perhaps your own official accountant.
Stay Aware
HMRC are usually highly unimpressed by claims along the lines of “XYZ told me differently” and keep in mind that, below law, ignorance is rarely an acceptable defence.
The penalties for transgression here can be severe, both for the driver concerned and for the company notionally hiring their services. Be wary of any suggestions from haulage companies that going self-employed is an easy pretentiousness to save keep on tax and NI – unless you enjoy the prospect of some extremely long and pining discussions once HMRC and possibly the courts.
Article Tags: Haulage Companies
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