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

[girlfriend44]

Instead of trying to get someone else to employ you, and have the worry of applying for work, interviews, and all the other things that go with working is there a reason why you don't work for yourself?

There are lots of positives to it and you don't need to rely on anyone else?
If you don't self employ why not?

I have a friend who has a successful business, she is amazingly driven and creative. She also never ever stops working - it is everything for her. Which is great as she loves it but it is definitely not easier.

Apart from the security of a regular salary ( which is pretty good and much more than anything I could earn if I was self employed)
I have a really good pension, 40 days annual leave (plus BH), and generous sick pay. I also have enough flexibility to manage life with a young child.

Plus, I enjoy working for a large organisation.

I've got the best of both worlds, a regular job and a hobby business side hustle selling something I love, and get great pleasure from sourcing/ sampling/ selling, and a bit of pin money or more likely heavily subsidized or free product for myself.

Scratches the entrepreneurial itch without too much risk as I have the proper job for guaranteed income

@taxguru I find it rather sad that you cannot imagine that some people just don't want the insecurity or hassle that being self employed involves. Perhaps you should be less judgemental.

DH is self employed and has done rather well out of it, but he is a consultant with very niche technical expertise, and companies worldwide pay a lot for his knowledge. He also has ADHD and struggles massively with the admin side - VAT returns, accounts etc.

My background is sales and marketing and I am very happy to be part of a team, not have to chase customers for outstanding invoices, be able to switch off at the end of the day, not worry about looking for more customers etc. I just don't want to work for myself.

I think it is very telling that the OP hasn't responded to questions about what they do for a living.

@taxguru sounds like the audiology PA is skirting close to IR35 doing 30 hours for one client. You’ve got to wonder if she would be better as an employee in that scenario as it’s very much all eggs in one basket but none of the protections of employment.

As what? Being self employed means a job that either contracted to others - which means building a customer base with perhaps investment in tools/materials, or starting a business from scratch with the insecurity and upfront investment (and the likelihood of failure). And many occupations can’t be self employed.
I would say financial insecurity is a main reason people don’t go out on their own (if it was possible to).

I do.

And I've had many messages via my website and social media over the years from people who claim, in badly written English, that my product is amazing and they can help me

Wow you have much sales but I can get you more sales in your store than before.

I love your product (not enough to write anything more specific than "your product" though, eh love? C&P is a time saver I guess)
but you are not visible, I can help . Yeah, if I'm not visible, then how did you find me?

The relentless bullshit from people trying to flatter you and act all buddy buddy hello dear... in order to scam you is very annoying. That's the downside to the age of the Internet I guess. Constant scammers sniffing around trying everything to take advantage.

But I digress.

Self employment is a tough route to take. A lot of hard work and long hours. It isn't the easy option or the right choice for everyone.

I would really hate to be self employed! I like the structure of employment - knowing what my role is within an organisation rather than having to be in charge, not having to "sell" myself or my product, being able to switch off my computer at the end of the day and not think about it again until the next morning, getting paid the same amount each month.

Anyway, a small shop or business unit will be exempt from business rates under the small business exemption as long as the ratable value is below the threshold - most will be.

It's not her only client. And she'd definitely not caught by IR35 as that's an area of my expertise and her working relationship/contract etc is all designed to be outside IR35, i.e. no mutuality of obligation, she's free to (and does) subcontract some of the work, uses her own equipment etc etc. Genuine self employed have no reason to fear IR35 - it's the "bums on seats" contractors who are mostly caught by it, and rightly so!

It worked for me because I started off with savings so I could wait until the invoices I send out actually get paid. Being married to someone in regular employment helps too as all the essentials in the budget come from the regular monthly income and all extras plus school fees and investments etc. come from my income.

Exact same situation for us.

We are going to see lots more workers pushed into supposed ‘self employment’ because of the combined effect of pension costs, employer NI threshold and rate changes, and from April 2026, a right to ‘guaranteed hours’ if you have a zero hour contract and have worked regular hours over a prescribed number of weeks - even as an agency worker. False self employment is now popping up in all sorts of unexpected areas on steroids - even eg retail.

And us.

My profession isn't freelance and I prefer to work in a situation where there is a pension scheme.

We've had "false" self employment in most areas for 2 or 3 decades - it grew massively under Blair/Brown. False self employment in retail is nothing new - there have been self employed "consultants" on makeup/perfume counters as long as I can remember, likewise self employed sales force staff in furniture and carpet showrooms, self employed "marketers" with stands inside supermarkets. It's really nothing new. It works for some people, doesn't work for others.

Of course, we have all the massive increase in fake self employment re Uber taxi drivers, Just Eat and Deliveroo deliverers, Evri/Yodel drivers, nail bars, hair salons, etc. Even the big haulage firms were at it, i.e. Tuffnells and Eddie Stobart created "fake" self employed driver positions.

But I think this thread should be talking more about genuine self employment and small businesses rather than the fake ones that are basically exploitative and the MLMs. Lots of genuine self employments, like most tradesmen, professionals, internet retailing, even online influencers.

There are two reasons I won't ever be self-employed.

1. I don't have a "thing". Something - a product or service - I feel adequately passionate about that I would want to go to great risk to try and make a go of a business.

1. My dad was self-employed for over 30 years, after being made redundant from Tate & Lyle in the early 80's. He started a chemical manufacturing company with 2 friends. Within 5 years, both of those friends decided they wanted to leave, and my dad bought them out. From then on, the buck stopped with him. Break ins to the factory in the middle of the night, broken contracts putting the business at risk, creditors wanting goods and then applying extreme terms for payment. A small business needs regular income, not large companies wanting 90 day terms for payment when the materials suppliers will only accept 30 days' credit.

When my dad came to want to retire, it took nearly 2 years for the sale of the business to complete and it was just as stressful, if not more, as running the day to day.

I have no interest in being self-employed. Point 2 might even be stronger than point 1.

Local Chambers of Commerce run a lot of courses and support for starting businesses and others - and the advice I've heard time and again for hose interested is for the employed to balance it with self employment until they can move on. I don't think the current rhetoric that dismisses employment & treats self employment as the only way to be free really has people's interest at heart (and largely seems to be to sell courses that the Chambers of Commerce likely has better and more affordable options for).

I'm both employed and self-employed. In both I'm relying on people and I have no issue with that. Even using this site involves relying on others and I don't get why that line is so often tied into self-employment.

There are many reasons I am no longer only self-employed. One is that doing mainly computer-based work had become absolutely horrible for my physical and mental health & was not working anymore with my disabilities. In the last year, I did a career change intentionally to increase my employed hours that cannot be WFH and has limited computer use mostly for health and wellbeing reasons. Now my daily movement needs are nearly entirely met by my work during the week.

Another is the I am the type of person who is more than happy to help others for free, which works less well in self-employment.

Another is I'm the type who can get obsessive about a project and work on for free - and I'd rather just do it that way at my own time rather than fitting it into a business model.

In my employed work, I work with a lot of self-employed people who will tell me how they were up very late working on this, that they got up so early to get there, how frustrating it is that they put in all of that and we're not going ahead today... I get it, but I also accept that putting in that work & the wear on our health often doesn't have that pay off.

There are many others, but largely it comes down to finding what works well for me when it comes to work. For me, it's both employment and self-employment that works around my wellbeing and how I work.

Virtual PAs for example is a profession/job that didn't even exist 20 years ago.

I think it's closer to 30 years ago now - I was doing it 20 years ago, and around the early '00s is when I started seeing the courses and agencies popping up at job fairs and everywhere else. It was a lot rarer then, but it existed and gaining traction then I think as broadband became more common in businesses.

Security, paid holidays and sickness, knowing how much money I'll get consistently so I can budget, routine, direction etc etc. way too stressful.

Yes, it works in this situation where there is the security of employed income with annual leave, sick leave etc. Self employment as a single person or where both are in the couple are seems very precarious to me but we all have different comfort levels of risk.

Well you need clients or to sell something and that’s not always easy.

Yup, with the introduction if the employment rights bill, if it gets enacted, we'll see more work being done by contractors/ SE as businesses shirk from regular employment. Less security and rights for people so a Labour fail!

I think it's important to have a balance and for people to have choice.

Self employment works brilliantly for some people who want flexibility and maybe don't "play well" with other people in a workplace. That was me! I was constantly frustrated by colleagues and bosses when I was a wage slave and hated the fake workplace friendships and office politics, etc.

Before I went s/e, in my last employed job, I was out of the office a lot, making regular visits to a group of clients, some weekly, some monthly, some quarterly, and I really enjoyed the variety and being able to pop into a different workplace for a day or two and then go back to the office for a day or two, etc. It gave me quite a gap/break so that I didn't get bogged down into the office politics anywhere.

It was that which really set me on the self employed route - the variety, different workplaces almost every day, lots of people interaction but never anything too deep - i.e. pleasantries with huge numbers of people, but not in anyone's pocket.

I think the government needs to provide a lot more help, support, grants, etc for people who actually want to be self employed. It would help if there was a "try out" period of maybe six to twelve months where unemployed and disabled didn't lose their benefits and were free to try self employment, with nothing to lose if it didn't work out. At the moment, they're unwilling to try if it means loss of benefits or having to re-apply to get back on the benefits they were previously on with no guarantee, not to mention having to fill in all the forms again.

There was a similar scheme back in the 80s where people going self employed were given a fixed weekly "wage" by the govt to subsidise the start up phase when they had expenses and probably no income. At the firm where I worked, we had loads of clients who were on the scheme and from memory it was pretty successful with lots of them staying self employed after the introductory period.

And how would you stop people gaming the system by setting up a non serious hobby type business in order to receive benefits?

Good question, presumably have some controls, checks and balances.

Brown made a massive mistake by not putting any checks in place with his tax credits which as you suggest was a gift to people setting up fake businesses that never made any money, just to claim they were "working" the requisite number of hours per week to get maximum working tax credits.

It's not that difficult.

If you made it time limited, any "fraud" would be restricted to 6/12 months, and if it was just a matter of no loss of benefits, then the taxpayer wouldn't be paying them more, just the same as if they remained on benefits. Payment of grants could be linked to actual expenses incurred, i.e. to cover the cost of a website being written, or to cover the cost of a shop lease or market stall or a van for a window cleaning round, etc., just for the 6/12 month.

It must be worth it to at least try to bring back some innovation and entreprenneurial spirit to the country. Not everyone can be "plodders" or on benefits. We need to aspire to be better than that at a societal level.