To 44 Tonne Ton, I notice you don’t say owt about the “Brits abroad” who are doing exactly the same on the continent. Lots of Brit lorry drivers in Afghanistan and Iraq for example taking work off people who are far poorer and need the work more than we do… I’d hazard a guess and say there’s more of us spread across the world taking jobs off natives than there are immigrants here taking “ours”. Oh and you only have the right to complain when a film crew can no longer go to a place like Peterborough, stand outside a dole office and offer dolies work at £7/hr only to be told they won’t do it and would rather sign on cos its harvesting crops or working in a food factory and its a bit too much like hard work.
I’m not working abroad am I? Any country I’d be interested in working in has very tight controls on immigration and will only take people with skills they’re short of unlike the open door policy here where just about any Tom,■■■■ or Harry can pitch up. I’m TRYING to work here and finding it increasingly difficult because there’s a glut of drivers these days and they’re mainly from Eastern Europe.I struggled last year to get 4 days a week never mind 5 and rates were static for 5 years and now being cut! Being in Europe and expanding the European membership suits the bosses as it opens up new labour pools for them who are free to travel and work throughout the EEC and claim all the benefits available when they haven’t contributed a brass farthing (that’s been my job for 35 years!)and the primary reason for employing them is to get drivers cheaper and other workers cheaper,nothing else!
The tacho regs exist to give a level playing field for all companies. What about a level playing field for the workers in this country? I can’t compete on cost with a guy who lives in a van. They park up in the car park all week so not spending anything on fuel. I have to travel to work each day to whichever site I’m working on,typically spending £40/£50 a week on fuel as well as servicing/insurance/road tax. He doesn’t pay rent/council tax/gas/electricity which I do so would you say were operating on a level playing field?
Just answer me one thing. Having read the above WHY would you expect me to welcome immigrants who undercut me in my work?
44 Tonne Ton:
I can’t compete on cost with a guy who lives in a van. They park up in the car park all week so not spending anything on fuel. I have to travel to work each day to whichever site I’m working on,typically spending £40/£50 a week on fuel as well as servicing/insurance/road tax. He doesn’t pay rent/council tax/gas/electricity which I do so would you say were operating on a level playing field?
Just answer me one thing. Having read the above WHY would you expect me to welcome immigrants who undercut me in my work?
There’s nothing to stop you going and doing the same so why isn’t the playing field level? One of my mates workmates at Skeltons lived rent free with free electric and water etc in a portacabin in the yard. I doubt you’d describe him as anything other than the BNPs image of a white Briton.
You’ve also just described most of the relief drivers working for Geopost - ALL OF WHO WERE ENGLISH but used to go to depots they were sent to with a caravan or motorhome.
So are you going to complain about them or are they OK because they’re white and were born here which is what it really boils down to isn’t it?
44 Tonne Ton:
I can’t compete on cost with a guy who lives in a van. They park up in the car park all week so not spending anything on fuel. I have to travel to work each day to whichever site I’m working on,typically spending £40/£50 a week on fuel as well as servicing/insurance/road tax. He doesn’t pay rent/council tax/gas/electricity which I do so would you say were operating on a level playing field?
Just answer me one thing. Having read the above WHY would you expect me to welcome immigrants who undercut me in my work?
There’s nothing to stop you going and doing the same so why isn’t the playing field level? One of my mates workmates at Skeltons lived rent free with free electric and water etc in a portacabin in the yard. I doubt you’d describe him as anything other than the BNPs image of a white Briton.
You’ve also just described most of the relief drivers working for Geopost - ALL OF WHO WERE ENGLISH but used to go to depots they were sent to with a caravan or motorhome.
So are you going to complain about them or are they OK because they’re white and were born here which is what it really boils down to isn’t it?
So I should give up my house and live in a van? What about the Mrs and the kids? That’s some world you live in! I know Brits who did the relief driver and they all had homes to go to. I’ve never done nights out as I want to see a bit more of my family than that aside from which I don’t own a caravan or motorhome who can afford that now on the money? All the Eastern Europeans I’ve seen were white so, no, their colour isn’t an issue! I don’t care what colour anyone is I just think that allowing gawd knows how many migrants (in the hundreds of thousands at least though!) into the country has only depressed rates and made it much more difficult for the indigenous population to earn a decent crust so I repeat, WHY WOULD ANYONE EXPECT ME TO BE HAPPY ABOUT THAT?
So I should give up my house and live in a van? What about the Mrs and the kids?
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You chose to have all of that just as they chose not to. End of. If you’re living beyond your means and are such a crap driver that you can only get a job in a shortage, thats your problem and not theirs.
I am no longer prepared to continue with you on this because people like you are the type who thinks that everything is someone elses fault/
Conor:
Well if the agency are paying their PAYE drivers £8/hr, you want at least £11 from the agency. If they’re only offering £1/hr more than PAYE, as many do, it doesn’t even cover holiday pay
Conor:
It may sound a lot but remember that on top of the hourly rate they pay their drivers there’s an additional 11% for holiday pay plus another 12.8% Employers NI so basically £10hr they pay their drivers actually costs them £12.38/hr
If holiday pay is 11% then on £8/hour it’s only 88p so the extra £1/hour more than covers holiday pay…
I work for the agency on £1/h more than the normal rate. I really don’t have a problem with this, and if you hold out for £3/h more you’re going to do a lot of sitting at home twiddling your thumbs. On a lot of weeks I only do at most one shift for the agency, so that extra £1/h actually makes me slightly DEARER to them than being on PAYE as if I was on PAYE they would have little (if any) Employer NI to pay as my earning for that week would be little if any over the threshold (currently £110 I think). Also the other thing you have to take into account is that working for your own company you’re paying a LOT less tax than you would be on PAYE. I’ll explain this with an example.
Say over a year you did 200 12h shifts hours at £8/h basic, £12/h OT. This comes to £22,400. You would be entitled to holiday pay, which if I remember correctly is about 12% of your basic pay so that’s 12% of £12800 which is another £1536. Total gross via PAYE is therefore £23936.
On PAYE you would take home just over £18400 after tax and NI.
For the Ltd. Co. example I’ll assume the agency pay you £1/h extra on the basic wage (and therefore £1.50 on the overtime). So you’ll be invoicing them £25200. You would take a salary of, say, £6500, on which you would pay a total of about £90 in tax and NI. Take off another £500 for expenses such as your accountant. Then the remaining £18200 if your company’s profit which you pay yourself as a dividend which is taxed at the small companies rate of 21%, so that’s £3822, leaving you with a £14378 dividend. This gives you a total of a few quid short of £20800 take home. So you’re almost £2400 better off over the year. And this is without factoring in other legitimate (and of course tax free) expenses such as mileage allowances, use of home as an office and meal allowances which will all effectively boost your take home pay. Also as a Ltd. Co. you have the option of registering for VAT on the small companies scheme which potentially adds about another 7% to your turnover (which for this example would mean an extra £1400 or thereabouts in your pocket after tax).
So in summary, you don’t need to try and get an extra £3/h out of the agency to be better off, at £1/h you’ll still be a lot better off (and so will they if you do more than one shift in a week).
Conor:
i) You’re self employed, the WTD doesn’t apply.
Yes it does. The definition of “self employed” for the purposes of the WTD is completely different to the definition of “self employed” for the purposes of income tax and national insurance. What does and doesn’t count for the WTD is spelt out quite clearly in the WTD regulations.
Essentially what it boils down to is that to be self employed for the purposes of the WTD you have to be an owner driver.
Conor:
i) You’re self employed, the WTD doesn’t apply.
Yes it does. The definition of “self employed” for the purposes of the WTD is completely different to the definition of “self employed” for the purposes of income tax and national insurance. What does and doesn’t count for the WTD is spelt out quite clearly in the WTD regulations.
Essentially what it boils down to is that to be self employed for the purposes of the WTD you have to be an owner driver.
Paul
There is no difference other than you don’t own the wagon. In fact it could be argued that as an O/D you’re likely to be trading as a Ltd company, you are in fact an employee so it does apply.
As a consequence, only a limited number of drivers are likely to be regarded as a “self-employed driver” for the purposes of the Regulations.
“Self-employed driver” means anyone whose main occupation is to transport passengers or goods by road for hire or reward within the meaning of Community legislation under cover of a Community licence or any other professional authorisation to carry out such transport, who is entitled to work for himself and who is not tied to an employer by an employment contract or by any other type of working hierarchical relationship, who is free to organise the relevant working activities, whose income depends directly on the profits made and who has the freedom, individually or through a co-operation between self-employed drivers, to have commercial relations with several customers" (Regulation 2 of SI 2005 No. 639)
Key considerations are that:
a self-employed driver must have an operator’s licence;
the amount of control that the driver has over their work is a key point, as is their reliance on profits to provide them with an income;
if the worker is restricted (either implicitly or explicitly) from working for another client/customer, then they would be covered by all the requirements of the Regulations;
in addition, most agency workers would not count as a self-employed driver because they are normally paid at a fixed rate. Once they accept a job, an agency worker is not free to organise their working activities.
For the purpose of the Regulations, drivers who are partners in a firm or who have limited liability will be treated no differently to sole traders. Providing they have an operator’s licence and meet the other requirements under the Regulations, then they can class themselves as a self-employed driver.
I’ve highlighted the most relevant line in red.
Conor:
In fact it could be argued that as an O/D you’re likely to be trading as a Ltd company, you are in fact an employee so it does apply.
No it doesn’t. The WTD definition of “self employed” doesn’t say that you have to be SE for tax purposes, it can apply just as much to an OD trading as a Limited Company as long as they meet the definition I’ve quoted above.
They really should have used a term other than “self employed” when they drafted the legislation as it causes no end of confusion like this.
Interestingly the way it is defined also means that an OD who is tied by contract to a single customer (which I assume will include many/most of the construction industry franchises) does NOT count as SE for WTD purposes.
Conor:
A lot of agency drivers seem blisfully unaware that they can actually claim mileage Basically, if you’re a mobile worker and don’t have a fixed place of work (i.e you travel from your home to the client and not from your home to the office and then to the client) or travel to the same place for a period which is about 3 months OTTOMH, you can claim mileage at normal HMRC rates for travel between your home and the client. Only downside is that you can’t claim it until the end of the tax year at which point you have to complete a P87 (employment expenses) and ask for a refund. You still need to keep mileage records as a self employed person would. Been doing that every year I’ve worked for agencies. Remember as well that the expenses also count as coming off your PAYE income so for tax credits ,for example, you’d say your earnings were what you got on PAYE less the amount you claimed on the P87.
This post caught my eye, I knocked up a bit of a spreadsheet to record the milage on a monthly basis, for the tax year Apr 6 > & I was wondering when in 2010 you put the claim forms in
So I should give up my house and live in a van? What about the Mrs and the kids?
You chose to have all of that just as they chose not to. End of. If you’re living beyond your means and are such a crap driver that you can only get a job in a shortage, thats your problem and not theirs.
I am no longer prepared to continue with you on this because people like you are the type who thinks that everything is someone elses fault/
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I didn’t expect you to answer the question I asked…
Living in a house is living beyond my means? I don’t have a big mortgage nor am I up to my eyeballs in debt Don’t get married or have kids? The human species would become extinct and who’s gonna pay your pension when you retire? Mine and other folks kids! There never was a shortage of drivers here and I’ve worked and paid taxes and N.I. for 35 years nearly. I can go back to anyone I’ve worked for and get a reference. I’ve even gone back to a firm. I’ve actually been recommended on a couple of occasions to other firms by bosses I’ve worked for. Until the early part of last year I worked for an agency I’d been with for 6+ years on mostly the same contract. Not the best payer but good regular work,even at this time of year, until the East Europeans destroyed one of his other contracts and instead of letting them go cos he didn’t have the work he started spreading the work more thinly. Five days went to four days,three days, not because I was a ■■■■ driver, I could go back there tomorrow but he’s also cut the rates now cos he has a surplus of drivers. I have another agency now and I know he his doing his best but he has to compete with lots of other agencies employing no end of these fellas. The situation was created by our being in the european union which allows workers to move freely across borders. All we’ve done is import unemployment to this country. Siuts the businesses that benefit from cheap labour but doesn’t do a lot for the ordinary working man in this country. Sorry if I’m not saying the right things for you!
Conor:
The “self employed” drivers weren’t actually conforming to HMRC test on self employment particularly the parts which state that you control where and when you work and that you can send someone else in to do the job instead of yourself and must work for more than one customer…
Small correction, you don’t actually have to work for more than one person, you just have to be free to do so if you wish. You can be a self employed driver and only ever work for one customer provided you are not tied to them and cannot work for someone else if you choose.
The bit about being SE from the working time bods is rubbish. There cannot be different criteria from different organisations just because it benefits them. If that was the case, you can also have your definition of SE which would be just as legal.
Now, making nobody classed as self employed unless they have an O licence is absolute rubbish. What if I own a vehicle that doesn’t came under O licence classification? Can I not actually be self employed then? Great, I can keep all the money and refuse to pay any tax then and just refer them to the WTD.
There can only be one legal definition of SE.
Mind you, the inland rev/DHSS disliked my SE driving 20 yrs back. Driving for 10-15 companies when time permitted as I had another business running. They told me I had to be employed by everyone of these companies. I told them balls, carried on and ignored them. Threats from them were met with, “Take me to court or leave me alone”. They gave up and went to find some gullible mug who wouldn’t fight back.
Unfortunately, they wouldn’t have to look too far for one of them nowadays…
DoYouMeanMe?:
The bit about being SE from the working time bods is rubbish. There cannot be different criteria from different organisations just because it benefits them. If that was the case, you can also have your definition of SE which would be just as legal.
Now, making nobody classed as self employed unless they have an O licence is absolute rubbish.
Of course different organisations can have different criteria, just because someone is not recognised as self employed for the purpose of the WTD does not mean they are no longer regarded as self employed by the Revenue.
DoYouMeanMe?:
Fine, so therefore you criteria or definition of self employed is just as valid as theirs.
If you can get your definition into the legislation it will indeed be just as valid. Until then you’re stuck with the one that is already there, as that’s the one the judge would be using if it ever ended up in court.
How many diferent bits of legislation have a different definition though? It’s ridiculous when they tag bits on (re O licence) just to suit themselves.
There should, in any sensible world, be one ‘set in stone’ definition of anything like this. Self employed should mean the same for a driver as a builder and for the tax man and the banks.
STill, while people are too scared to stand up and have an opinion and need to be seen to be nice obedient servants, things aren’t going to change are they.
I’d hazard a guess and say there’s more of us spread across the world taking jobs off natives than there are immigrants here taking “ours”. Oh and you only have the right to complain when a film crew can no longer go to a place like Peterborough, stand outside a dole office and offer dolies work at £7/hr only to be told they won’t do it and would rather sign on cos its harvesting crops or working in a food factory and its a bit too much like hard work.
never had any holiday money from an agency, don’t know the ins and outs but I dare say I never will 
Don’t get married or have kids? The human species would become extinct and who’s gonna pay your pension when you retire? Mine and other folks kids! 