Anyone got any experience of paying a live-in mother's help?

[Oly4]

Hello, just wondered if anyone had any experience of paying a live-in mother's help?
I've been quoted £150-£200pw by an agency but I understand I need to register with HMRC to pay their tax and NI.
Does anyone have any experience of doing this? Did you use a nannytax type of company to sorry it out or did you do it yourself?
I'm completely confused by the whole thing.
An au pair wouldn't be appropriate for us as we have an 18 month old.
Thanks for any advice

If you feel you would get confused etc with the whole payroll thing as I would then yes there are several companies out there that for a yearly fee will do all the paperwork for you. You can then how much you want to pay the nanny gross and they will work out how much you need to pay her each month and how much you need to send to the hrmc for the tax and ni and your employers ni contributions as well as providing payslips/p60s and p45 when the time comes. As well as providing any other advice re money/tax/contracts you may have. Well worth the yearly fee in my opinion.

Thanks!

Tax might not be an issue: £200 p/w is £10,400. From April the personal allowance (on which no income tax is paid) is going to be £10,600.

The fee for the agency might not be worth it then, if you only have employers' NI to worry about.

Although the allowance is going up so no tax to pay on less than £10600. You will still need to pay both employee ni and employer ni so make sure you factor the employee ni in when offering the gross amount.

Oh thanks so much guys, that really helps. Is it easy to work out how to pay the NI? Do you just calculate it and send it to HMRC? Sorry, I am so new to this!

It's National Insurance that is the issue, as the threshold for that starts lower, currentl £111 per week, goes up to £112 per week from April. Tax Rates 2015/16

Oly4 - you register with HMRC as an employer. You then use their online system to report monthly pay (or weekly). You then pay over anything due to HMRC once every 3 months to an account they tell you about.
It is a bit of a learning curve at first but gets easier once you do it a few times, as long as nothing complicated occurs.

A payroll company will charge around £150 a year for doing Monthly payslips, providing advice, doing the employers end of year return. May seem a high price to pay but it is worth it if you do not fancy learning how to do it.

Depending on the salary, you may find you do not need to do any more than register as an employer. It depends on various factors, so hard to know at this stage. Call a nanny payroll company, see what advice you can get out of them before you sign up to use their service.

Gov.uk: Payroll - Overview

Using PAYE Calculator you can get a feel for figures (it currently will do 2014/15 tax year, so figures will be different from April). At £200 gross per week, you are looking at quite small figures but there will be deductions to be made and Employers NI due (least there are in 2014/15 tax year).

I would not totally dismiss the idea of an au pair depending on what you want done.

Over the years we have had au pairs whose job it is to look after our eldest kids but we have a now nearly two year old and since he was newborn the au pairs we've had have obviously got to know him well. Although he goes to nursery for his main childcarethe au pairs have been amazing with him so I've tended to let them get a little involved with his care too. Many of their au pair friends care for under 2s too. Our current au pair is devoted to him and does six hours a week with him and they both love it.

Au pair world is currently full of highly experienced teachers/nurses etc from Spain desperate for a job in the UK and looking to be au pairs.

It might be worth considering as au pairs are paid below the tax threshold.

Thanks Print, that's helpful.

Ps where did you find your au pair? Au pair world looks like looking for a needle in a haystack. I don't mind paying an agency £600 or so if they have great candidates. What did you do?

We have always used au pair world. I know its daunting but make a detailed profile with all your requirements, put narrow criteria on who you want to hear from (specify age, chose just a few countries etc) then await contacts. Immediately delete all contacts who don't start with a personal letter that refers to your profile then read the profiles of the others. Have a standard set of questions you email those you like and the await answers. Delete without reading those that take longer than 48 hours to reply and those whose replies are incomplete. Read the rest and weed down to 3-4 favs and arrange to Skype. We normally manage to recruit after just a 3-4 evening's work. I have never used an agency but I don't think they offer much better candidates than those you find on au pair world.