Some haulage companies may be deliberately offering spurious advice to so-called ‘self-employed drivers’ practically their tax responsibility status. Don’t fall for that!
A few disreputable haulage companies are offering severely dubious tax status advice to people notionally regarded as ‘self-employed drivers’.
In some cases their advice may be incorrect due to ignorance, but in others they are intentionally exasperating to offload their tax and NI liabilities onto adorable drivers. The results for the drivers themselves could be scratchy and impinge on trouble taking into account HMRC.
What’s Going On?
If you’re a company meting out a fleet of vehicles and employing drivers, later a fair component of your cost base arises from your employee expenses. Any of those you can offload, including the liability to total and pay tax and NI for those employees, is going to save you money, time and effort.
Some haulage companies are so maddening to convince drivers to start on themselves as brute ‘self-employed’ in order to edit their costs and thereby permit them to allow demean prices in this totally competitive industry.
What’s Wrong?
The pain is that HMRC (aka the Tax Office) doesn’t take that an individual driving vehicles for substitute company is, typically, ‘self-employed’. They are extremely aware of the attempt of some employers to bypass mandatory contributions in such a fashion.
There is moreover a health and safety issue, as some employers aren’t paying the required employer’s responsibility insurance premiums they should and covering their employees accordingly.
HMRC understand a agreed dim view of schemes where a company tries to portray their employees as ‘self-employed’, for that reason some haulage companies are exasperating to achievement regarding that by offering inappropriate advice to individual drivers to “work upon a self-employed basis” even considering such an unconventional isn’t way in to them.
Top Tips to guard Your Interests
If you are a driver thinking of going self-employed based on advice from a potential customer, here are some summit tips to save in mind:
• Your potential customer is NOT accountable for your tax affairs. YOU ARE! So, discuss your exact matter taking into consideration HMRC and get the facts from the horse’s mouth consequently to speak.
• That thesame customer is in this area enormously NOT an impartial tax advisor. Their interests and yours are not one and the same in this respect.
• Typically, HMRC will not accept your status as instinctive self-employed if you steer for out of the ordinary company using their vehicles and practicing licences etc.
• You can as well as be fairly determined that the thesame will apply even if you drive for several vary haulage companies under the similar support as above.
• In order to be considered self-employed, you will infatuation to be the registered owner of your own vehicle and have energetic licences and insurance in your own reveal 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 terribly unimpressed by claims along the lines of “XYZ told me differently” and keep in mind that, below law, ignorance is rarely an sufficient 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 mannerism to save child maintenance on tax and NI – unless you enjoy the prospect of some extremely long and throbbing discussions following HMRC and possibly the courts.
Article Tags: Haulage Companies
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