au pair share?

[mamaspice]

Does anyone know if it is legal to hire someone else's au pair? My friend's au pair is looking for extra work and I would like her to look after my kids for one day a week? Is this possible? Would i have to hire her as my nanny for one day a week? Any advice would be very grateful.

Yes it's legal AS LONG AS that au pair has the right to work (basically isn't Romanian or Bulgarian on an au pair visa).

You would also need to operate everything as an employer, being her second job, and register with HMRC to pay tax so it is effectively paying her as a nanny. Your friend would also need to keep a note of the amount the au pair earns with her as, unless she's being paid dead on the limit (which I doubt) the au pair will end up overpaying in tax with you and be entitled to a rebate. PAYE info for employers and info on employees with multiple jobs. She won't have a P45 so you'll need to complete a P46 where she declares that she has another job but before she does that she'll need to do one with your friend as well.

She can request that a certain amount of her main tax allowance is transferred to your job info here.

Alternatively you can figure out how much she currently gets per week, figure out how much you'll be paying her (needs to be at least minimum wage per hour for her age), work out how far over the tax code that takes her and come to some kind of arragement where you pay your friend extra for your au pair and only one of you has to go through the employer rigmarole.

Is this for the odd bit of help or a regular arrangement when you, for example, are going out to work and depend on the person to be there?

People can be really funny about their AP taking on work during the day for other families - even sometimes babysitting at night! If you've heard from her family that she wants more work and they're happy about, great. But if it's only from her I would check on what their views on the matter before taking her on as you could find it goes haywire and you are left high and dry.

Find out what would happen if the other family needed her during the time she's with you, holiday cover, sickness etc. Having sickness/holiday cover is one of the main reasons people get APs in the first place and I would want to be sure that the other family was happy for the arrangement with ME to continue regardless.

A big advantage of having an au pair is not having to operate PAYE if, and they ususally are, under the limit. They may not be very enthusiastic about unexpected admin, ie. noting he earnings if this is nec for her to get a tax rebate, registering as an employer to get her full tax allowance even if they don't pay tax, etc. And not entirely unreasonably. Then again, they may choose to ignore the whole 'second employment' thing and bumble along. Which is not strictly speaking correct but I suspect you will find they don't want any admin.

Thank you for your help. Its good to know its possible if a bit complicated. I will obviously need to talk further with my friend to work out how much she would get paid altogether. As far as I can work out she would not be earning over her tax allowance (unless its different for non uk residents, would this make a difference?) Especially as her stay in the uk falls over two tax years.

It does seem that it will involve quite a lot of admin and this could be off putting for the original employers.

Thanks again.

As she's presumably living in the UK she is resident and therefore on the usual anything over £97 needs declaring, anything over £110 gets taxed.

Weekly PAYE doesn't take into account being over 2 tax years - rebates do that.

As long as she's not Romanian or Bulgarian it's fine, if administratively complex.

Okay, it doable but I can see its administratively complex and may seem like too much bother for the other family. What a shame, it seemed such a good idea and simple solution to two problems.

Oh meant to add au pair is not Romanian or Bulgarian.

What ever nationality the au pair is - you will have to register as an employer since it will be her 2nd job.

frak has said as long as she is not Romanian or Bulgarian it's fine - but the converse implied isn't necessarily true.. There is no au pair visa any more so if she is Bulgarian or Romanian but already obtained her 'blue card' then she can work for you just like any other EU person - subject to the same conditions i.e. minimum wage & you registering as an employer.

True, but au pair visa is easier to understand than saying they have a purple card as most people have no idea the UK even has a colour coded card system.