Mother's Help - and tax/ NI issues? URGENT

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I want to employ a refugee (who has status) as a mother's help. I've known this lady for a year or so - and she is wonderful. She needs to find a job and I would rather she works for me, I need help! and don't want her to have to be put somewhere horrid by the job centre*.

I want to employ her for a maximum of 16hrs a week. The job centre wants to see a contract of employment - so that she can keep some housing and also not have to attend interviews for other jobs. Does this mean that I should be having to pay her NI and Tax too. If so - I can't afford to employ her.

*She has had some terrible stuff happen to here, she's very gentle and is brilliant with children - she is working toward a childcare nvq - and I thought that helping me might help her with her coursework and give her the necessary experience for her CV.

Here are the employer registration rules: www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/intro/register.htm#1

So if you pay her over £101 a week or she gets another job, you will need to register. Then you would pay her NI and she would pay some NI and income tax (but you would deduct from her pay).

The minimum wage is £6.08, so you would obv have to at least pay her that per hour.

She would be entitled to National Minimum Wage as far as I know, so if you were to pay £6.08 an hour (NMW for someone aged 21+) for 16 hours a week, using www.mranchovy.com/calc/ there appears to be no Employers NI to pay. There is also no Employee NI or Employee Income Tax to deduct.
Looks to me as though you could pay up to around £8.40 per hour and be in that situation. Once you get above that, then Employers NI starts to kick in but it isn't much. Have a play with the calculator MrAnchovy kindly created.

If you agree a Gross salary, you don't have to ever pay her NI or income tax. The cost to you as the employer is Gross Salary + Employers NI. You would though have to Deduct employee NI and employee income tax from her pay and pay it over to HMRC on your employees behalf. Do you see the difference - it's the employees money (employee tax and ni) that you are paying over to HMRC rather than your money, though it does not seem like that.

I expect that the job centre wants to see a Written Statement. Call it a contract if you like, it's a written document which details the agreement between you and your employee.

First you need to check and keep a copy of the documentation that makes her eligible to be employed in the UK - see Business Link.

If you pay more than £102 per week (not £101), or if she already has another job, you would need to register as an employer, although no NI is payable until £136 per week (but if she has another job you may have to deduct tax from all of her earnings). £102 per week is £6.37 per hour for 16 hours.

If you pay more than £102 but no more than £136 in any week, there is very little paperwork to do - you can register with HMRC here.

Note that in order to qualify for Job Seekers Allowance or Income Support she would have to work LESS THAN 16 hours, whereas if she works exactly 16 hours or more she may qualify for Working Tax Credit so to say you want to employ her for a maximum of 16 hours doesn't make sense - either you want to employ her for less than 16 hours to protect JSA or exactly 16 hours to kick in WTC.