Does anyone work on a truly self empolyed basis I.E. working for different companies as and when they require you and invoicing them for your time. I have heard that the tax man can be very fussy accepting drivers as self employed.All other trades do it so why not drivers? I can understand that if you were to work only for a single company but not if you work for a number of different ones. I am employed so dont realy know how or if it would work. Does anyone out there do it? and does it work for you? 
I do exactly this. When you register as Self Employed, you have to tell the IR what you will be doing. They had no problem with it whatsoever. They’ll send you a bill every t3 months for Class 2 NI contributions and after 6 weeks you’ll receive your self assessment forms. Say you start now, you wouldn’t pay any tax until Jan 2007 but you will have to pay 50% of the tax bill you paid in Jan 2007 in June 2007 “on account” in your first year so the aim is to make no profit on paper.
It is very simple to do. One thing though is that you have to make sure that the clients insurance covers you because if you have to get your own cover, it completely wipes out the point of doing it. THe hardest part is setting up a business account. Try your own bank first.
The other thing is deciding a rate. I opted for £9.50/hr baic which puts me about £3/hr over local wages. Companies go for this because it isn’t that much higher than it actually costs them per employee anyway when taking into account an employees holiday pay plus employers NI contribution. And it works out roughly about 30% cheaper than agency rates.
You need to keep good accounts, I use Quicken 2002 Deluxe&Business available on Fleabay for £20-ish, and beware that some companies are on 60 day terms. One of mine is. I’ve just invoiced them for September and I’ll get paid in the first week of December. Saying that though, for 7 days work, the invoice was for £950.
As well as that, you want to open a savings account that pays interest monthly. Whenever you get paid an invoice, immediately transfer about 33% of it to the savings account. That way, you’ll have set aside money to pay your Tax/NI as well as some holiday pay and it’ll get interest on it. Saves you spending all you get then being in trouble with the taxman when he lands you with a £3k bill you can’t pay.
It works for me but then again, I’ve spent half my 13 years driving with agencies and have a good reputation as an agency driver in Humberside so it was simply a question of approaching the right people at the places the agency sent me to. Good thing doing it that way is that you get to try them out at no risk first through the agency and if you like the job, approach them. If you don;t don;t bother. The agency can’t do anything about it because the company will be dealing with your company and not employing you. And no, I don’t feel guilty about it - agencies use and abuse us as they please so it’s just desserts IMO.
Hello I’ve been self-employed for 4 years. My wife and I own a online business and we are in a partnership, my agency driving and other driving goes against my own self —employed accounts, so I keep them all separate.
As for the question you asked about being self-employed. I gave them the rate of £9.00 per hour and send them an invoice and at the end of the year do my own accounts. But be careful to save some money to pay your tax and NI. We do our accounts on line and it saves us money just have to remember to document everything
I have been self employed for the last four years , and have been paid on invoice without any probs, until August of this year, when one of the agencies I drive for was inspected by the revenue, and told that they could not use self employed drivers anymore and subject to the outcome of the investigation they may have to pay the national insurance shortfall backdated to whenever.
Needless to say I was not able to work for them until the dispute was sorted. The upshot is that according to the revenue there is some specific legislation that prohibits agencies using self employed people, so In order to resume trading with them, and to protect the interests of my other clients, I formed a limited company and pay myself through that, although I am still able to be self employed as well (when it suits me) , it means I have to pay national insurance twice but that isn’t much for self employed.
Also there are quite a few on here who are on the Nova scheme which is the limited company route and Nova do all the paperwork for you just do a search for Nova and maybe try and talk to an accountant before you decide.
good luck
What do you guys working as self employed do about Employers and Public Liability Insurances? Who do you go to and how much does it cost? I’m considering going the same route and this is the one thing I’ve no idea about the cost of.
Also where did you get the contract you use with yout customers? Is it a ripped off one from a local agency or did you get a lawyer to draw one up specifically?
Ta,
Paul
My insurance costs me about £160 per year for Employers amd Public Liability, but if you wanted professional indeminty as well you can add at least another £400 to that.
The contracts can be got online from various legal websites, I don’t actually have one as I work through an agency and it suits me not to have one, we agree a price and they pay it at the end of the following week, just like if I were employed by them, but I get more of the money 