Roymondo:
[
To be fair though, what many (most?) agencies offer is not “Self Employment” but “Limited Company” status (typically through some sort of umbrella scheme) where the idea is to channel the money through the “Company”, thus avoiding NI and regular Income Tax on (most of) the cash. As far as I am aware, none of the tests mentioned earlier apply to these arrangements.
Yep that’s a fair comment Roy. As I understand it an umbrella company pays the contributions on your behalf, essentially employing you themselves. For a slice of the pie of course. But even that comes with its own issues as companies have been known to mysteriously vanish without paying what’s due. Ultimately its the drivers tax liability and that’s who HMRC will come after if payments don’t get made.
Its a minefield.