What exactly is a self employed driver ?
You don’t get many of them about these days as the tax and NI people have been clamping down. I did it for a couple of years, a good many years ago, and I was hired to drive someones vehicle and I invoiced them for my time and I payed my own NI and Income Tax, and claimed all my expenses against tax. Bit like being a one driver agency. We had one guy working where I work in this manner up until about a year ago but he has left now.
Depends what you mean by “self-employed”… 
Pick your potential answer…
- From the Taxman’s point of view. (Whole stack of rules…basically boils down to having more than one customer and no guaranteed work.)
- From the Driver’s point of view. (Either an owner driver; or does all the paperwork on behalf of the gaffer, using various subsidiary companies to get it past the Taxman; or a genuine freelancer working agency-style but cutting out the middle man.)
- From the Gaffer’s point of view. (Anyone daft enough to fall for the flannel!)
The beauty of TruckNet UK. Question asked at 22:19 and three answers by 22:28. 
Some of us self employed drivers were still on the road then if not we would have responded as well.
LucyR:
Depends what you mean by “self-employed”…Pick your potential answer…
- From the Taxman’s point of view. (Whole stack of rules…basically boils down to having more than one customer and no guaranteed work.)
- From the Driver’s point of view. (Either an owner driver; or does all the paperwork on behalf of the gaffer, using various subsidiary companies to get it past the Taxman; or a genuine freelancer working agency-style but cutting out the middle man.)
- From the Gaffer’s point of view. (Anyone daft enough to fall for the flannel!)
thankyou all for repyling and for the comments,i think ill not be going down this road?.
I’ve just been to an agency in Caldicot and the guy there told me I could earn more money by becoming self employed. Gave me some info of a company called the Counting crew based in Chepstow.
The Counting Crew is a company who specialise in helping individuals maximise
thier earnings by operating in a tax efficient way.
You do this by becoming a Sole Director Company.
The benifits of becoming a limited company are considerable in most cases and the
points below show how you as a driver could be better off!
You retain more income as tax and National Insurance contributions are
reduced
Limited Company Directors can claim travel and othe business
related expenses
You are in most cases able to negotiate a better hourly pay rate from your
agency because they do not have to pay employers NI contributions,
this can therefore be passed onto you!
The Counting crew will manage your accounts and bookkeeping to achive
maximum effective tax planning for a weekly fee of £25 plus VAT.
Oblviously this is a generalised overview and circumstances vary depending onthe
individual.
Their words not mine, I have another page of stuff from them but can not be bothered to type it out.
I don’t like the sound of it myself.
Wayne
Wayne:
You retain more income as tax and National Insurance contributions are
reducedLimited Company Directors can claim travel and othe business
related expensesYou are in most cases able to negotiate a better hourly pay rate from your
agency because they do not have to pay employers NI contributions,
this can therefore be passed onto you!
You don’t have to be a limited company for those ‘benifits’ to apply, I’m not a limited company, just a sole trader, but the first two apply in my case and the third isn’t relevent to my situation.
Wayne:
The Counting crew will manage your accounts and bookkeeping to achive
maximum effective tax planning for a weekly fee of £25 plus VAT.
£1300 a year if you are VAT registered and £1528 if you are not. 
Hope they can save someone lots of money to make that fee worth it. My accountant manages to ‘achive maximum effective tax planning’ for a fee of £300 a year.
I have been a self employed part time driver for the last 15 years - I have an account with the tax man and just do my own accounts. Because I have a full time job and pay a full “stamp” there I also have an exemption from the NI people so I dont pay doulble stamps.
Although it’s not called Counting crew up in my neck of the woods this system does actually work a treat and it’s fully legal. However, to my knowledge, it only applies to agency workers, although thinking about it, to make it work you change from being an agency driver to being self-employed anyway so I guess it’s the same thing.
I was on it a few years ago when I was doing some agency work for UPS. Even after paying their fee (which was £20/week) I was taking £480/week take home on tramp work with the agency but £560/week take home on this “scheme”. Your tax and NI contributions continue as normal (I checked with the IRO) and you can also claim for travelling to/from work and also receive a substantial increase on your tax free night out money plus you get ANOTHER bonus on top of that too (all basically to make your expenses as high as possible so that your “basic” is as low as possible to keep your tax deduction at the minimum, follow?).
There is one disadvantage to it though, you can’t be on the “scheme” continuously (I forget the reasoning) and from the drivers I’ve spoke to who had been on it a few years, usually you come off it after Christmas when the dead period sets in and then go back on it again at the start of March and they’re happy with that.
I highly recommend it if you’re an agency driver. Also, your agency will be happy to pay into it as well as it works out cheaper for them apparently.
Brgds
Speedy