Is an after-school carer an employee?

[Furzella]

I wonder if anyone who understands the nanny/child carer tax/employment status arena help me with what to do about our new carer. I've found a lovely person to pick up my two DCs (9 and 7) after school three days a week and look after them between 4.30 and 7.30pm, term times only. Her main job is at a school and she will help us out after this. She will be providing the sole-charge care in our own home. I've had full time nannies in the past and have always gone down the full kosher employment contract/tax route, and I want to do the right thing this time too. However, I'm not sure whether she counts as an employee or self-employed, whether 9 hours a week counts as babysitting, or generally how best to approach this - and how HMRC would view it...

Any ideas?

I expect it would count as an employment (albeit a second one) given its you who
Controls where/what she does in same
Way you do for a nanny. Hmrc website has
Guidance on this .

If the person you employ to do this is otherwise self-employed in multiple other jobs, you might just get away with her being self-employed as your after-school carer.

Bonsoir that is right- she only would be self employed if had right to pick and choose which days she took care of kids (amongst host of other things). I cannot see hmrc easily accepting she is self employed with such a regular arrangement particularly when it's at someone's home
And presumably there will be instructions on what she does (eg pick up , feed , supervise homework).

She just has one other job. It sounds like we should be treating her as an employee. I'll get her to send her tax code over.

Merci beaucoup Bonsoir and Gigondas.

Just get her to complete a P46. Then follow the procedure in P49 for starting them as a new employee who isn't providing a P45 but instead has completed a P46.

Agree a Gross wage.

Brilliant, thanks nannynick.

As Nick says, you can't just ask her to 'send her tax code over' because tax codes are specific to an individual employment - the tax code she has in her main job will be different from the code in your job. If you are doing your own payroll, follow the Paying Someone for the First Time procedure as Nick says.

Assuming you are paying less than £136 a week there will be no NI in your employment, but she will be allocated the BR tax code so you will have to deduct tax at 20% on the whole of the amount you pay her. These amounts should be calculated in a special way so you should use a payroll service or software but I'll let you in to a trade secret - BR calculations are so simple that if you just take 20% of her gross pay as tax each week you will be less than 50p out by the end of the year. I am not recommending that you actually do this of course .