Is there any way a nanny can be self employed?

[headfairy]

Is there a clear list of criteria for defining someone as self employed?

Here

Click on 'employed or self employed' or there is an 'Employment Status Indicator (ESI) tool' for checking your/your Nanny's individual circumstances

Oh thanks so much for that, I could trawl through the Hmrc website for a billion years and never find the right bit!

LOL, it is actually an AMAZING website in terms of information (depite most people bemoaning HMRC when they get a chance), but it can take some trawling. I tend to do a specific google search and pick the relevant hmrc information link, rather than searching within the hmrc site.

Be careful, because I don't think a nanny can ever fulfil the requirements for being self employed, and if HMRC suddenly investigate, and decree that she was an employee after all, they will come after you for PAYE and NI.

It could cost you dear.

Our nanny actually has three separate employers, I wondered if that was part of the criteria for being deemed self employed.

No you can have three separate employers and not be self employed. Imagine someone with a day job in eg a warehouse, and two part-time jobs in Tescos and a local pub. There's no way they would be considered self employed by any of their employers or by HMRC.

No, each job is evaluated on its own merits. Key indicators for a nanny are working hours (you define them) and no right of substitution.

But you should beware that the ESI tool and the related guidelines will almost ALWAYS come up with the answer 'employed' for anyone involved in caring for children mainly in their own home, even a maternity nurse who is often self-employed. There is a huge amount of case law behind this, for instance these are just those that HMRC highlight in their internal manual. HMRC do employ experts in this area who will give a ruling in a particular case (they don't give advice or deal with hypothetical situations though) who can be contacted here.

You do need a fair bit of background knowledge if you are going to deep-search HMRC as Octopus suggests because the page you link to might be relevant to companies but not individuals (the letters 'CTM' at the start of the reference is a clue, short for 'Corporation Tax Manual'), or to employees but not to the self employed etc ('EIM' for 'Employment Income Manual'). Also the information there is written from HMRC's point of view and in many marginal cases a different interpretation of the law is possible which is more favourable to the taxpayer. If in doubt, consult an accountant - we don't know everything but do have access to reference works which provide a lot more background and most of us either have in-house specialists or use outsourced technical support where necessary.

If you do want to deep-search the HMRC site using Google the best way is to put site:hmrc.gov.uk in the search box along with the words you are searching for like this.

Thanks for that Fraktal, that link octopus provided clearly indicates to be self employed you have to be able to define the hours you work and can send someone else to do the work if you are unable to, which clearly isn't the case with a nanny.

Our nanny actually has three separate employers, I wondered if that was part of the criteria for being deemed self employed.

It can be part of the picture (it is one of the questions asked by the employment status tool), but no one factor is decisive - and you would need to work in many more than three separate engagements in a 12 month period for it to count for anything.