To wonder how many of you employ yourself and if not why not?

I don’t think I have any skills that would lend themselves to self-employment. The roles I’ve been doing for the last 20 years wouldn’t really work (in science - but I don’t have a PhD). Then the stress of would I get enough work, and dealing with people…ugh.

Because I really love my job and it's not something I could do on a self-employed basis.

Also, the people I know who are self-employed are always complaining about how hard it is being self-employed.

Replace colleague with staff or customers, same shit different role.

well I can tell you're not a self-employed accountant with advice like that...

The general public become your employer and it can be as or more stressful!

There is different paperwork involved with being self-employed. VAT only applies if you are turning over more than £90k, most people who are self-employed don't, so you don't need to worry about VAT. NI is calculated automatically when you do your tax return and is not nearly as complicated as tax codes and benefits in kind and that sort of thing. If you are working from home, business rates are irrelevant. Not every self-employed person needs to think about distance selling.

Agree that the downsides are no paid holiday and you're never really off duty, many of my customers are in North America which means emails come in overnight and I have to deal with them first thing in the morning. For me the flexibility is well worth it.

Unless someone's going to pay me to do jigsaws or diamond painting 😂 I really have no skills to sell!

I get a decent wage for what I do but it's really not something that would transfer to self employment in any way.

I also would not trust myself to keep on top of my tax obligations! I pay tax because I have no choice, it's taken before I get paid. Give me the money and the responsibility to pay it myself? That has disaster written all over it 😱

So many reasons.

I don't need the hassle - I have a good job that I enjoy, as much flexibility and autonomy as I need and I'd have to work bloody hard on my own to replace that income. It's unlikely that I would exceed it.

I like the security that comes with a regular salary, paid holidays, paid sick leave, employer pension contributions etc.

And I like my colleagues, I don't see them as a negative.

DH is self employed. He works really hard but earns much less than I do, and it's pretty relentless. Why bother?!

When I started going to the job centre, I asked about making crafts to sell. I am good at it if I am honest. I literally just wanted to keep busy and recoup material costs.
My works coach said I would lose 63p for every £1 I made, and I would have to register as self employed and do a lot of paperwork.
So I never bothered.

I would constantly be worried that I wasn’t complying with VAT registration / distance selling regs / insurance requirements / business rates / NI rules / << insert name of your favourite piece of legislation / regulation here>>. I’d rather that was all my employer’s problem.
There are some jobs that you can’t do as a sole trader - banking, finance, law, medicine, insurance etc. You can be a self employed contractor but that status has got harder to achieve post the IR 35 changes.

To be honest, I would definitely send my teenage DD to a high school run by a MNetter!

We all moan about our clients and other consultants instead! Self employed doesn’t mean just working in isolation.

So many reasons I don’t even know where to begin?

• I finish my working day & forget about it until the next day, I’m getting paid at the end of each month, no need for me to be up all night or weekend stressing about what income I’m going to have
• If I’m not well, I get paid sick to recover
• I recently had a baby & am pregnant with my second now, my employer pays me 6 months full pay maternity to allow me time to heal & enjoy my baby, I wouldn’t give that up to then have to work probably a matter of weeks postpartum because otherwise I would have no money coming in
• If I fancy a holiday, I don’t have to sacrifice my income for a few weeks break or work while I’m away
• If I’m puzzled by something at work there’s always someone I can ask, somewhere to escalate it, HR or Unions to protect me- working for yourself is lonely & risky
• My pension- enough said
• I am far more comfortable knowing what I can expect to be paid each month & so are banks, so loans, mortgage, car finance etc, I know what I can afford & they can see what I can afford

I employ myself, I'm a top notch boss. To myself. Pay is good, more than I would be paid if I was employed by someone else at my skill level and I don't have to chase work, it comes to me unlike being employed and constantly being expected to make so.eone else larger profits.
Also, I don't get sacked because sometimes my children come first.

Because many of us work in a role that offers a service to society, not a job you can advertise as piece work and find 'clients' to sell yourself too.

Self employed
police ?
probation officers ?
prison officers ?
firefighters ?
judges ?
social workers ?
hospital porters ?

and so many thousands of other roles

You don't seem to have thought much about this issue, OP. For a start, not everyone is good at sales and, when you work for yourself, you have to be. There's a big difference between being good, or even excellent, at what you do; and being good at winning and retaining business. They are completely different skill sets and not everyone has both. On top of that, is the additional skill of scaling up.

As others have said, you also need some form of capital, even if all you're doing is baking cupcakes from your kitchen. You also need to have a not insubstancial cushion to pay for both everything in your personal and business life until the business starts turning a profit.

You also need to invest (time and effort, if not money) in research, understanding legal duties and managing finances...so there are quite a few reasons why self employment isn't right for everyone. And that's before we get on to the fact there is no paid benefits, holiday, sick pay, maternity leave and it's not a great environment for those who are risk averse.

Because I am a secondary school teacher.

Because I am creative and good at my job but I am not a sales person and I hate the stress of finding and signing up new customers.

Also I am good at taking a company at a specific stage and moving them on, not building my own startup.

I have recently become self employed , I find vat, invoicing, tax, accounting etc quite stressful, and often need to find time outside my regular working hours to sort that out.

This, my job can't done via self-employment.

Most of the wealthiest people I know are Self employed

Because the industry that I worked in as an employee until very recently requires a huge amount of cash flow to make it work (martech) and it’s extremely hard to raise that kind of investment on your own until you have a cracking track record of delivery.

Which I now have so am now doing exactly that. I had a roadmap and it meant working for a pay check but more importantly for a reputation for a long time.

Also all the self employed people I know earn very little, especially the small sole traders. Its more pocket money work.

I agree.

I tried but then had a heart condition make me pause. I'll get back to it one day. It was hard to find clients though as my USP was 'hey, I can find your errors!' and people don't usually enjoy having mistakes pointed out to them!