CIS - that’s one thing I don’t want to have to get involved with again 
In road haulage, it is rare for someone to be genuinely self-employed unless they are an owner-driver.
“Whether someone is employed or self-employed, is not a matter of choice but is determined by the particular terms and conditions under which a person works.
“Broadly, someone is self-employed if they are in business on their own account and bear the responsibility for the success or failure of that business. They will be employed if they personally work under the control of their engager, and do not run the risks of having a business themselves…
“We are finding evidence that haulage companies are sold the idea that they can set up, or have an agent set up companies for their workers and avoid tax.
“The companies and the workers appear to be unaware that there is legislation that may apply and allows HMRC to pursue workers, agents and the companies themselves. They could face investigation and significant tax bills.
Seems pretty clear cut to me. I think a lot of people are trying to convince themselves that what they’re doing is legal. That won’t stop Her Madge’s band of merry tax men coming a knocking though. And about time, this has been a scam from the start.
I bet certain companies are bricking it. Take Jaguar Land Rover in Birmingham for example. A 100% agency site and judging by the adverts from Milestone, all the drivers are LTD.
They offer £11.50 for days which, at face value, is a good rate. But knock off a quarter of that (I’ve always been paid an extra quarter when doing LTD or Umbrella) and we’re down to £9.20. Doesn’t seem like such a good job now does it.
It was fun while it lasted but the game is up now. You’d have to be mad to keep on working through these schemes these days. If they do stop all these schemes, and my guess is they will eventually, we might all benefit from better PAYE rates. After all, agencies don’t force drivers onto these schemes for our benefit.
The answer is simple don’t use agencies build your own customer base
alix776:
The answer is simple don’t use agencies build your own customer base
I don’t know a lot about all this stuff, mainly because I am happy these days to be an employed full timer, and also because I aint really interested, so I get bored easy reading stuff like this. 
However the point you make is one that I have often thought, and wondered why some agency guys do not try this rather than use agencies.ie cut out the parasites and go in direct at the full rate.
I’ve never used agencies i work direct only as said earlier I’ve had agencies ring me telling me there "great rates ". It usually goes quiet when the ask for driver liability insurance usually at that point I start laughing one agency tried saying was a legal requirement, im still sharing for the call back as they were checking with there legal dept, that was almost 12 months ago, apparently my rate was too high for them as well as i heard him swallow when I told him what my charges were don’t think he expected that
robroy:
alix776:
The answer is simple don’t use agencies build your own customer baseI don’t know a lot about all this stuff, mainly because I am happy these days to be an employed full timer, and also because I aint really interested, so I get bored easy reading stuff like this.
However the point you make is one that I have often thought, and wondered why some agency guys do not try this rather than use agencies.ie cut out the parasites and go in direct at the full rate.
Because too many in positions of power, are idle chancers who find it a whole lot easier to give all the work to an agency and the backhanders / meals / corporate days / ■■■■■■■■ that entails 
alix776:
The answer is simple don’t use agencies build your own customer base
That still doesn’t really make you self employed. Let’s say for example you work for Stobarts (perish the thought), Maritime and Reed Boardall. It’s still their truck, them taking all the risks, them telling you what to do and when/how to do it. You might have multiple contacts but that just means you have multiple employers, not that you’re self employed.
HMRC are going after disguised employment and what you have suggested falls into that category.
Stanley Mitchell:
robroy:
alix776:
The answer is simple don’t use agencies build your own customer baseI don’t know a lot about all this stuff, mainly because I am happy these days to be an employed full timer, and also because I aint really interested, so I get bored easy reading stuff like this.
However the point you make is one that I have often thought, and wondered why some agency guys do not try this rather than use agencies.ie cut out the parasites and go in direct at the full rate.Because too many in positions of power, are idle chancers who find it a whole lot easier to give all the work to an agency and the backhanders / meals / corporate days / [zb] that entails
Are you implying that most agencies are corrupt shysters and not the driver’s best friend that they try and portray to us all, who provides employment to for a minimal comission? 
Who would have thought it eh? 
robroy:
Stanley Mitchell:
robroy:
alix776:
The answer is simple don’t use agencies build your own customer baseI don’t know a lot about all this stuff, mainly because I am happy these days to be an employed full timer, and also because I aint really interested, so I get bored easy reading stuff like this.
However the point you make is one that I have often thought, and wondered why some agency guys do not try this rather than use agencies.ie cut out the parasites and go in direct at the full rate.Because too many in positions of power, are idle chancers who find it a whole lot easier to give all the work to an agency and the backhanders / meals / corporate days / [zb] that entails
Are you implying that most agencies are corrupt shysters and not the driver’s best friend that they try and portray to us all, who provides employment to for a minimal comission?
Who would have thought it eh?
Yep, bang to rights 
The-Snowman:
With all the posts on here going on about big tax bills and budget changes to expense claims etc, im a bit confused.
If someone is actually fully and properly self employed and set up as either a sole trader or their own ltd company, is this not perfectly ok provided they are set up right for tax purposes? Is the main problem not just the ones who are in an umbrella company? Is this not the ones hmrc are going after?
No. It is all about whether the job fully complies with being self employed as the agency get out of paying employers NI and the worker claiming expenses they’re not entitled to regardless of whether the driver is their own Ltd company or using an umbrella.
If someone is telling you who can do the work, when to do the work and how to do the work - in short if you’re doing the job exactly the same as people doing the same job on PAYE with the only difference being who and how you get paid then you should be on PAYE with the agency.
Rjan:
Is a s/e plumber with a spanner (his tools), who works on the customer’s equipment (say a large pump or an industrial boiler), different from a driver with a bag and a glove (his tools), who works on the customer’s equipment (the wagon)?
Yes. He chooses who does the work, when the work gets done, how the work gets done and is financially liable for any mistakes.
If you tell a builder whose building you an extension at home that you want him there for a specific time or specific day, do you suddenly become his employer? Liable for PAYE? What if you give him a blueprint for the work - does he have any real control or freedom left?
He chooses how the work gets done, who does the work, when to work (if a specific start time he chooses breaks and quitting time) and he is financially liable for any mistakes.
Can a renowned artist or performer you engage, really send any other Tom, ■■■■, or Harry in instead? And if not, then are you suddenly their employer?
They choose when and where to work, how to do the work and are financially liable for any mistakes.
And if the builder cannot estimate the job’s length, and so charges you a daily rate, again does he suddenly become your employee?
See above.
To tie all this together, if you engage a bricklayer to build a wall at home, and he provides minor tools like a trowel but nothing substantial (and he uses your garden shovel to mix the mortar, and he doesn’t clear any waste left over), and you refuse to accept substitution (because you know the quality of his work), and you expect him to keep the arranged schedule, and you pay him by the day, is he employed or self-employed? Our intuition is still to consider him self-employed.
He is again financially liable for any mistakes and you don’t tell him how to do the job, only what and when.
Keep grasping at those straws, whatever helps you sleep at night.
alix776:
The answer is simple don’t use agencies build your own customer base
To really stand no chance of falling foul of HMRC you would need to have some drivers on your books that you employ and can send in for the work.
I’ve only ever in 20 odd years of working for agencies come across two people who worked for agencies as self employed and were in full compliance with HMRC. Both of them run their own small agencies with a handful of drivers on their books paid through PAYE, have their own direct clients, the agency doesn’t have a say which driver they choose to send in. They are sub-contracting to the agencies that they’re doing the work for in a wholly different way to Alix776 having his own Ltd Company “Alix776 Ltd” where he is the only worker and the agency when they book work from Alix776 Ltd expect Alix776 to be doing the work. When the agency phone Alix776 they expect Alix776 to do the work. When they phoned the particular example I worked for they’d ask him if he had a driver available to do a run, he’d ring me or one of the other drivers to see who wanted it, the same as you would with the agency you work for, then ring the agency back and say “yes I’ll be sending Conor”. I’d do the job, fill in a timesheet for my employer and he would invoice the agency - I didn’t fill in their timesheets.
That is literally the only way you can be self employed working for an agency and not fall foul of HMRC.
Conor:
alix776:
The answer is simple don’t use agencies build your own customer baseTo really stand no chance of falling foul of HMRC you would need to have some drivers on your books that you employ and can send in for the work.
I’ve only ever in 20 odd years of working for agencies come across two people who worked for agencies as self employed and were in full compliance with HMRC. Both of them run their own small agencies with a handful of drivers on their books paid through PAYE, have their own direct clients, the agency doesn’t have a say which driver they choose to send in. They are sub-contracting to the agencies that they’re doing the work for in a wholly different way to Alix776 having his own Ltd Company “Alix776 Ltd” where he is the only worker and the agency when they book work from Alix776 Ltd expect Alix776 to be doing the work. When the agency phone Alix776 they expect Alix776 to do the work. When they phoned the particular example I worked for they’d ask him if he had a driver available to do a run, he’d ring me or one of the other drivers to see who wanted it, the same as you would with the agency you work for, then ring the agency back and say “yes I’ll be sending Conor”. I’d do the job, fill in a timesheet for my employer and he would invoice the agency - I didn’t fill in their timesheets.
That is literally the only way you can be self employed working for an agency and not fall foul of HMRC.
But they only full filled the requirements as you interpret them.
Conor:
Rjan:
Is a s/e plumber with a spanner (his tools), who works on the customer’s equipment (say a large pump or an industrial boiler), different from a driver with a bag and a glove (his tools), who works on the customer’s equipment (the wagon)?Yes. He chooses who does the work, when the work gets done, how the work gets done and is financially liable for any mistakes.
You’re jumping ahead. The key point I’m making is that “providing the tools” is a very wooly concept - the plumber provides spanners, but not the pump or the boiler that he works on. The whole point of his job is to work on the customer’s pump or boiler. And ok, so we say a plumber fixes pumps and boilers rather than operates them, but then we’ve already moved away from “the supply of tools” as an indication of s/e, and instead the distinction now is between fixing and operating. And that distinction between fixing and operating is now another wooly concept, which certainly doesn’t generalise across multiple occupations (for example, a garage mechanic fixes, but he is still an employee of the garage).
If you tell a builder whose building you an extension at home that you want him there for a specific time or specific day, do you suddenly become his employer? Liable for PAYE? What if you give him a blueprint for the work - does he have any real control or freedom left?
He chooses how the work gets done, who does the work, when to work (if a specific start time he chooses breaks and quitting time) and he is financially liable for any mistakes.
He doesn’t choose “how” the work gets done any more than a driver, mechanic, or plumber does. I’ve told him where to lay the foundations - there’s no question of the builder building whatever he wants. And as for breaks and finishing time, I still expect a full day’s work out of him and workmanlike progress. Most employed professionals in practice choose their own break times and control their pace of work.
It might be true he is financially liable if he slips up, but most employers are in a position to impose financial liability for poor workmanship or damage (at least within the worker’s own scope of control, such as the manner of driving a vehicle, or the methods taken to repair an engine, or service a boiler).
Can a renowned artist or performer you engage, really send any other Tom, ■■■■, or Harry in instead? And if not, then are you suddenly their employer?
They choose when and where to work, how to do the work and are financially liable for any mistakes.
How can you be financially liable for a bad painting or a poor dramatic performance? And even so, as I said above, most employers will impose liability on employees for such things. And the when and the where is usually determined by the customer/employer.
And if the builder cannot estimate the job’s length, and so charges you a daily rate, again does he suddenly become your employee?
See above.
To tie all this together, if you engage a bricklayer to build a wall at home, and he provides minor tools like a trowel but nothing substantial (and he uses your garden shovel to mix the mortar, and he doesn’t clear any waste left over), and you refuse to accept substitution (because you know the quality of his work), and you expect him to keep the arranged schedule, and you pay him by the day, is he employed or self-employed? Our intuition is still to consider him self-employed.
He is again financially liable for any mistakes and you don’t tell him how to do the job, only what and when.
Keep grasping at those straws, whatever helps you sleep at night.
The problem is you haven’t actually realised your own fallacies.
If “financial liability” is the difference, then if I hire a builder to do something that the builder is not sure will work, and I say I will bear the risk of failure (i.e. I’ll pay the builder for his time, whatever the outcome), do I then become his employer? I’m thinking of something like asking the builder to build a house extension before a wedding party 7 days later - and the builder says “well, that’s a very tight schedule, I cannot guarantee completion”, and I say “well make the orders, and begin work anyway, and see how far on you get”. I do not think he becomes my employee.
Also, does a factory employee become self-employed, just because the employer says that the employee will have to pay for bad workmanship or wasted materials? Again, I think not.
There might well be laws which protect employees from such deductions, but that puts the cart before the horse, because before the protections can be established, it must be established that the person is in fact an employee.
Trust me, you think it’s so simple, but even judges have tied themselves up in knots with this question.
Nessa’s already explained it from the hmrc point of view, and the rules are there in black and white. Yes, there may be complicated cases in some industries, but when it comes to a temporary driver driving somebody else’s truck to somebody else’s orders, its fairly cut and dried.
scaniason:
Nessa’s already explained it from the hmrc point of view, and the rules are there in black and white. Yes, there may be complicated cases in some industries, but when it comes to a temporary driver driving somebody else’s truck to somebody else’s orders, its fairly cut and dried.
I agree with the position that drivers are (and should be) employees.
What I am saying is that, how HMRC (and judges) supposedly get there, is using tests that are completely build upon sand. Whenever it goes to court and judges have to explain it, they end up throwing their arms in the air and saying “it’s all a matter of impression and degree”.
The real difference between employer and employee on the one hand, and supplier and customer on the other, are issues like the relative market power and organisation of each, the social status of each in the context, who has legitimate authority over the work, and so forth - things that we all (including judges) can intuit to be typically present in some relationships and not others, but you won’t find any judge today talking about those factors as tests for employment status.
That is why a householder is usually the employer of a domestic servant, but not a builder.
Like a lot of things HMRC related they target the wrong end of the firework, normally the cool end, not the fizzy end. It yields results for fat tories, provides fantastic figures and court cases for the papers and protects the fat Tory’s big business chums. If they were that bothered by big corporate - big tax, they’d shut down the UK Caymans. The government far prefer to pick on us limp dicks on the ground, that and bullying us why we should stay in the EU lest we ruin their party. If by the book IR35 is designed to stop the Friday to Monday - employed to self employed migration then the dubious practices of UK big business should find itself on the sharp end, not the man. The man won’t change the machine anymore than the calf that suckles the milk controls the quality of milk in the udder.
Freight Dog:
Like a lot of things HMRC related they target the wrong end of the firework, normally the cool end, not the fizzy end. It yields results for fat tories, provides fantastic figures and court cases for the papers and protects the fat Tory’s big business chums. If they were that bothered by big corporate - big tax, they’d shut down the UK Caymans. The government far prefer to pick on us limp dicks on the ground, that and bullying us why we should stay in the EU lest we ruin their party. If by the book IR35 is designed to stop the Friday to Monday - employed to self employed migration then the dubious practices of UK big business should find itself on the sharp end, not the man. The man won’t change the machine anymore than the calf that suckles the milk controls the quality of milk in the udder.
And that is really the sum of the situation, you need deep pockets to fight the Government, if you have a 100 million in the caymans you can easily splash out 100k on a legal team. self employed driver doesn’t stand a chance. Some great arguments used in this thread but getting your say in court would break the average man - you would probably be risking every penny you have ever worked for in legal fees, and you could also destroy your health with a years worth of sleepless nights waiting for your day in court.
^^^ very much this. Its the modern British way of doing things, go for the cheap, easy, quick fix, not the option that might net you more in the long term, but take more effort to achieve. They know that lorry drivers are the last people to stick together and fight, and won’t put up expensive legal fights, so it stands to reason that they will be targeted rather than friends of the gummint.
Bluey Circles:
Freight Dog:
Like a lot of things HMRC related they target the wrong end of the firework, normally the cool end, not the fizzy end. It yields results for fat tories, provides fantastic figures and court cases for the papers and protects the fat Tory’s big business chums. If they were that bothered by big corporate - big tax, they’d shut down the UK Caymans. The government far prefer to pick on us limp dicks on the ground, that and bullying us why we should stay in the EU lest we ruin their party. If by the book IR35 is designed to stop the Friday to Monday - employed to self employed migration then the dubious practices of UK big business should find itself on the sharp end, not the man. The man won’t change the machine anymore than the calf that suckles the milk controls the quality of milk in the udder.And that is really the sum of the situation, you need deep pockets to fight the Government, if you have a 100 million in the caymans you can easily splash out 100k on a legal team. self employed driver doesn’t stand a chance. Some great arguments used in this thread but getting your say in court would break the average man - you would probably be risking every penny you have ever worked for in legal fees, and you could also destroy your health with a years worth of sleepless nights waiting for your day in court.
If you have hundreds of millions in the caymans you don’t need to spend a penny to defend yourself anyway. The caymans is owned and overseen by the UK and our government. It’s all legit m’lud to squander millions away offshore there in a UK overseas territory. In fact, they love it. All this spanking of big company bottoms about tax in the UK is peppers ghost.
I wasn’t advocating challenging HMRC in court more alluding to why they shine the light on the small man.