Some haulage companies may be carefully offering spurious advice to so-called ‘self-employed drivers’ just about their tax answerability status. Don’t fall for that!
A few disreputable haulage companies are offering deeply dubious tax status advice to people notionally regarded as ‘self-employed drivers’.
In some cases their advice may be wrong due to ignorance, but in others they are purposefully irritating to offload their tax and NI liabilities onto saintly drivers. The results for the drivers themselves could be aggressive and distress distress like HMRC.
What’s Going On?
If you’re a company management a fleet of vehicles and employing drivers, later a fair component of your cost base arises from your employee expenses. Any of those you can offload, including the liability to collect and pay tax and NI for those employees, is going to save you money, grow old and effort.
Some haulage companies are suitably grating to persuade drivers to begin regarding themselves as instinctive ‘self-employed’ in order to edit their costs and thereby allow them to have enough money humiliate prices in this categorically competitive industry.
What’s Wrong?
The hardship is that HMRC (aka the Tax Office) doesn’t take that an individual driving vehicles for another company is, typically, ‘self-employed’. They are agreed familiar of the attempt of some employers to bypass mandatory contributions in such a fashion.
There is also a health and safety issue, as some employers aren’t paying the required employer’s responsibility insurance premiums they should and covering their employees accordingly.
HMRC give a positive response a extremely dim view of schemes where a company tries to picture their employees as ‘self-employed’, correspondingly some haulage companies are bothersome to measure just about that by offering inappropriate advice to individual drivers to “work upon a self-employed basis” even past such an different isn’t entrance to them.
Top Tips to guard Your Interests
If you are a driver thinking of going self-employed based upon advice from a potential customer, here are some summit tips to keep in mind:
• Your potential customer is NOT accountable for your tax affairs. YOU ARE! So, discuss your truthful matter in imitation of HMRC and get the facts from the horse’s mouth for that reason to speak.
• That similar customer is on definitely NOT an impartial tax advisor. Their interests and yours are not one and the similar in this respect.
• Typically, HMRC will not accept your status as visceral self-employed if you drive for substitute company using their vehicles and operating licences etc.
• You can as well as be fairly determined that the same will apply even if you drive for several interchange haulage companies below the same tutelage as above.
• In order to be considered self-employed, you will habit to be the registered owner of your own vehicle and have full of life licences and insurance in your own say or that of your own company. Don’t hear to any advice to the contrary unless it comes from HMRC or perhaps your own approved accountant.
Stay Aware
HMRC are usually very unimpressed by claims along the lines of “XYZ told me differently” and save in mind that, below law, ignorance is rarely an plenty defence.
The penalties for transgression here can be severe, both for the driver concerned and for the company notionally hiring their services. Be wary of any suggestions from haulage companies that going self-employed is an simple way to save keep upon tax and NI – unless you enjoy the prospect of some enormously long and desire discussions considering HMRC and possibly the courts.
Article Tags: Haulage Companies
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