babysitter/tax/employee question

[sleeplessinderbyshire]

My friend's MinL very kindly sometime spicks DD up from nursery and babysits her here or at her house for an hour if I'm running late at work. She also does some occasional ad hoc babysitting. I'm pregnant with DC2 and DH is away a lot so I'm likely to need her help a bit more over coming months. She's keen to helpas much as possible (has finally agreed to letting me pay her but still accepts way less than the going rate for this sort fo thing). If I'm using her 1-2 evenings a week (for max 2hr at a time) and she has no other jon I assume she'll not earn enough for NI/tax to be a problems will it? Provided she can always say no (and she does if she's bisy) presumably she remains self employed does she? Don't want to get things worng but also don't want to scare her off with words like "contract" or "payroll" when she sees herself as being a granny figure to dd (own GPs are 100s of miles away)

If she can say no is probably not enough to say she is not employed by you unless she had others that she also did this for (hopefully mranchovy will spot this as they are great on this kind of issue) so I would be concerned that there is a risk that regular nature of this could be employment.

Re nic/Paye threshold i would depend on how much you pay her and how often you use her but would doubt it would be enough. See here for link on domestic employee Paye www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/intro/domestic-employees.htm

I would doubt it's counted as employment if it's as as hoc as you describe and almost certainly under the threshold.

If she's uncomfortable with cash what about proposing sone other form of compensation? That would eliminate the problem completely.