Nanny leaving

[Countessofgranthamm]

Nanny leaving who has been with us 3 and a half years. Is it unreasonable to just give gift and a card or is it customary to give money too? We are moving overseas for DP work so I suppose we are technically the ones leaving! She is the first nanny we have had to unsure of the customs?

Aside from the fact this is illegal

she’s been with you three and a half years and you sound like you want to give her a quick wave goodbye and nothing more! For Christ sake she’s been helping to raise your children for over three years. Give her a months pay and a heartfelt card. Ridiculous

funny that!

You are also defrauding HMRC as you are not paying employer contributions. You may think she's self-employed, she's not if she has the same days per week or a Rota and has the same place of work each day.

So basically she's self employed, which is illegal as she is in a full time position where you dictate hours/days worked. You should be paying her tax national insurance, holiday pay etc etc. She should be on paye

God I know very few Nannies who are keen to up sticks and move abroad on their employer’s say so! We do have lives and families outside of our work, just like everyone else. We aren’t just service bots to be packed into a suitcase 🤣

Plenty of solid advice on here about why it's vanishingly unlikely nanny would meet HMRC's definition of self-employed.

Assuming you're in the UK @Countessofgranthamm and an assessment by HMRC would prove your nanny of 3.5 years should actually have been on the books as an employee, fag packet estimate of what you owe her as a thank you on termination of her employment because you're moving abroad is:

based on an assumption of £30k/year paid cash in hand and the nanny has actually paid all her own employee NI & income tax due AND HMRC would allow that to be transferred across to cover those obligations when correctly assessed as an employee, you would still owe something around the order of

£10k in employers NI for 3.5 years
£2.5k employers minimum statutory pension contributions for 3.5 years
£2k in redundancy pay - exact amount dependent on nanny's age

potentially also £12k in missing holiday pay and
£5k on grossed up er and ee NI, income tax and pension contributions on the unpaid holiday pay

Sorry that's not the answer of 'yeeeeah, a 200 quid john lewis voucher & a bottle of pop will be fine' - which is presumably what you were after OP?

Hope your earnings in whichever tax haven you're buggering off to work in will cover what you owe in back-pay to the UK coffers and your nanny!

(and that your nanny doesn't shop you to HMRC once you've paid her only the £2k redundancy you legally owe)

....although do I really hope that? Or would I prefer that someone did report you for circumventing employment law & that you coughed the £15k in taxes you owe to help fund vital uk services for honest, law-abiding tax payers 🤔

If income tax hasn't been paid, you as her employer would be liable for all of it.
Saying you've made your own arrangements might not convince HMRC.
I'd give her a redundancy sum of a decent size.

Sorry been up the wall this week. Spoke to DH and have taken everything on board and will be rewarding our nanny fairly and learning for the future. Thanks to all responses they have been eye opening!

Curious as to why she's not going with you,

We offered, she doesn’t went to. She has her boyfriend, family, nieces and nephews and friends here. She has her whole life here, we’re just a small part of after school care which I 100% understand why she wouldn’t uproot everything else for.

fair play for coming back and admitting that. I understand she was an after school nanny but if she worked longer hours in the school holidays you should take that into account too, particularly if your kids are privately schooled, those holidays are long.

Nowhere does OP say she is full time and that she dictates hours. You’ve made that up. It’s after school care only. Perfectly legal to have a self-employed nanny on that basis as it does not take up the majority of working hours.

That's still unlikely to make it self-employment @Didimum.

I completely take onboard that if it's only regular after school hours, the fag-packet numbers I did based on an assumed full time salary will be way out. NI & pension due would be minimal as it's likely the total annual salary would only just be over the minimum earnings threshold for each. Redundancy payment & holiday back-pay due (& taxes on that) would be pro-rata to costs.

However HMRC's process for assessing self-employment is not related to number of hours worked. If it's a regular, set working pattern the service provider is required to attend at a place of work required by the paying party & it's personal service (as in the nanny can't just sub her equally qualified nanny friend whenever she likes, or decide to do 10-2 on a Wednesday instead of 3-7 on a Tuesday), then it's a contract of employment.

Even if there's not a written contract - it's contractual by conduct.

OP is on very thin ice.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/employment-status-factsheet-esfs1/employment-status-factsheet-esfs1#your-employment-status-is-not-a-matter-of-choice

Lovely update OP. Best wishes for your new life overseas!

That wasn't said in the original post, any work done on a regular basis regular hours needs to be on paye , a self employed person dictates their own hours.

I know exactly what the requirements are because we used to have a self employed nanny and my DH worked for HMRC at the time (and did so for 10yrs), and had the decision confirmed by HMRC.

Neither you nor anyone else any any details of the set up whatsoever. For that reason this thread is laughable.

No, that it is not part of the criteria.

I think you'll find it is

I have been assessed through the criteria. Someone’s cleaner also likely works regular hours on a regular basis, with a time and day dictated that that the worker can accept or reject. They are still not an employee.

@Didimum the thread isn't laughable, it's been (generally) really sensible advice, grounded in UK employment law.

Regardless of what arrangements you had before (2 decades ago?!? you're not specific about the terms of the arrangement you had either!) and how you managed to get pre-clearance from HMRC on that, it still remains vanishingly unlikely that OP's nanny actually meets the current terms from HMRC for self-employment.

Again, the information is here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/employment-status-factsheet-esfs1/employment-status-factsheet-esfs1#your-employment-status-is-not-a-matter-of-choice

and it's on every employER to ensure both the terms and the taxes due are correct assessed and paid.

Hopefully that IS useful, not just to the OP, but to others in similar circumstances who are following along.

Who said anything about 2 decades ago? It wasn’t. It was recent. I don’t need to give my set up details. It’s laughable because no one here has any knowledge whatsoever of the OP’s set up. You and everyone else are basing their ridicule, criticism and disdain on zilch. OP has childcare she refers to as a nanny and that childcare happens for part of afterschool – that is all you know.

It's not really so much the regular-ness of hours but who is in control.
My cleaner comes on a Wednesday morning but sometimes she might say she'll come on Tuesday instead this week, or she can't make it next week. Or a colleague is coming as well so they're done in half the time.
Similarly, a childminder might work Mon-Fri but if they need an afternoon off for a funeral or they're going on holiday for May half term or they're not working Fridays anymore - they inform their clients, they're not requesting leave.

Most nannies working regular days are not able to just swap or cancel hours whenever they want.

I find in life the wealthier people are often the meanest. I do hope you will be paying your Nanny a really big bonus when you do dismiss her. Sorry but I suspect that you are of the same mindset and will try to get away with a minimum payment as you were even covering up that you were getting rid f her. It was not the case of our Nanny is leaving. I say pay her off with a good amount and we would then rate you better. Come on surprise us all and show how the people who feel entitled can sometimes be generous.!

This is often (not always) true! My current employers are the least wealthy I’ve worked for (in terms of outward clues like house/area, car, and general lifestyle anyway) and the most fair, respectful and generous. I once attended an interview at a Manor House that looked like something out of Saltburn and they were an actual lord and lady, and would only give me the role on the proviso they paid £10,000 through the books and the rest in cash because ‘they paid all the staff like that’. They couldn’t understand why I turned them down.