Any freelance nannies?

[staranise]

I'm about to look for a nanny and my friend was telling me how she employs a nanny as a freelancer, ie, pays her a daily rate, gross, the nanny is therefore responsible for her taxes (and presumably must register herself as self-employed?).
I'm not sure what would happen re. holidays.

Has anyone come across this and if so, how did it work? What would be the advantage of doing this?

The nanny can only be self-employed if she can choose whom she works for and when e.g. if your friend calls the nanny and asks her if she can work for her on Thurs and then calls her again next week and asks her if she could work two days. The nanny has many clients and is free to say yes or not to your friend depending on her other commitments. I suspect that is not what your friend is doing. If the nanny is working fixed hours on fixed days for your friend, she can call herself whatever she likes but she is an employee and your friend should be liable for her tax and employers NI. If HMRC investigate, it is the employer and not the employee who is fined and ignorance is no defence.

It's called "having a self-employed nanny" and many "employers" delude themselves that this is legally ok, because it works out cheaper and less hassle for the employer. eg you don't have to give any mat leave or paid holidays to a self employed person. It's almost certainly not legal, unless the nanny really is certified as having self employed status for a particular job (you can have different status for different jobs), which isn't really possible unless they only ever take short term assignments (lots of guidance on this in previuos threads).

Fine, thanks for your answers. TBH I didn't think it sounded very legit - I'm self-employed myself at the moment and cannot see how this compares with a nanny eg, I have lots of clients, can turn down work, don't get paid holiday etc, none of which applies to the usual nanny situation.

Not sure how it works with my friend though as she reckons she checked it out with HMRC - she is also self-employed, doesn't get paid holiday and hence uses a self-employed nanny though both she and the nanny work more or less full time.

def. sounds illegal. asking for trouble.
self-employed employer is totally irrelevant to nanny job status.

nannies shouldn't be complicit in this but its employers responsibility and they should respect the employment status of the person who looks after their kids and not try to diddle them out of employment rights/pension etc. or encourage those who are vulnerable and need the work to not have their tax paid.

Nannies can be expensive but please employ someone properly if you go the nanny route.

To be fair, it's not always greedy employers exploiting poor, underpaid nannies either! I am currently looking for an after-school nanny and have had two out of my three candidates tell me blithely that they are self-employed so I can pay them a gross wage and they will sort out their own tax, etc. I obviously can't be sure but in the case of one of the nannies at least I suspect this means she is paying no tax at all. Luckily, she is not my preferred candidate but one of the others is and I think that when I go back to tell her she has to be my employee if she wants the job, she will lose interest.

I am a self employed nanny and have several clients that I do ad hoc work for.

They are all aware that unless they book the times they want with plenty of notice, they may not get the hours they want.

I am more than happy to give clients a contract which states that I am self employed and would even let them speak to my accountant if they really wanted to.

Of course, I don't work full time, I don't take on permanent contracts or "regular" hours outside of short term contracts

I've had nannies before and it wouldn't occur to me that they could be s-e, that's why I was asking re. my friend - she's a barrister and is very careful never to do anything dodgy as it compromises her practicising certificate etc. I still think she is probably wrong on this but am interested to see that there are s-e nannies.

Being s-e is not about diddling people out of their rights BTW - I'm s-e myself through choice. I was just interested to see how/if it could work for a nanny.

Should add:
Being s-e is not always about diddling people out of their rights BTW

Staranise, you could always ask your friend how she is managing to employ a self-employed nanny and what checks she carried out to see that this is legal/possible? Maybe she has found a legal loophole that the rest of us are unaware of! Believe me, I'll be first in line to exploit it if she has! Agree that being self-employed doesn't mean exploitation, I think most maternity nannies operate that way as they are constantly moving from family to family. I assume that someone who nannies for families on an emergency basis would also do that.

Perhaps it's becasue she has good back-up childcare in that her parents live close by - so if her nanny can't work it's not the end of the world. She also has two DCs at school, one at nursery PT and she can work from home in an emrgency.

Regarding making it legal, she said she spoke with the tax office. I thought it couldn't be legal because of issues of substitution of labour/location etc (which wouldn't apply to a maternity nurse)?

If you have a short-term contract under 3 months can you employ a self-employed nanny?

I have met an S.E nanny. She, like Paula had a list of clients that she worked for as and when she could. There was no set weekly routine and she was responsible for paying tax and n.i. I queried it at the time having read on here and on nannyjob about the difficulties of nannies being s.e. and it did seem that in her circumstances everything was above board and HMRC were aware of her business (she had sought their advice in writing etc).

im se for my ad hoc/temp work - but the main thing i think to decide if you/the nanny is se is if the nanny decides not to work that day, she can and there is nothing the family can do about it

i decide my days/hours/salary and if i want to work i will

does your friend have set/regular days/hours

staranise- 'hence' suggested that because your friend is se it affects nanny status.

annh- think only advantage for nanny offering SE for what is clearly an 'employed' job is to be more competitive to get a job. I'm sure some children would be happy to do dangerous work and not go to school or adults will offer sacrifice paid holidays or to work triple shifts to keep their job in recession but they are not exploiting themselves, legally at least it's the people that hire them.

I don't really know enough about my friend's work - I know it's pretty flexible etc. Being a barrister must be a special case no? I would be very surpriswed if she did anything knowingly illegal as she has to be very careful because of her licence to practise law.

FWIW, I don't get paid holidays etc and don't feel exploited in the slightest. I chose s-e because of the flexibility it gives me. What I sacrificed for that is the stability of regular income. I can see the advantages of both sides.