Occasional nanny - how to pay?

[Stillnoidea]

How difficult is it to do the whole tax/NI stuff yourself for a nanny? We now use our old nanny for just a few days in each holiday and the cost of getting our payroll service to work it all out is getting out of proportion (even though they do a PAYG service). If I wanted to do it all myself how do I do all the calculations and send data to HMRC etc? Can any of you give me an idiots guide? Unfortunately I don't think I can just assume she is below the thresholds as she does bank work for a nursery and other part time nanny jobs.

Thanks for any help.

Only way I would see it working would to be to do monthly pay (so it keeps the number of times you have to produce payslips down) and do zero pay for some months. Using paye software you could do the full payment submissions every time you paid them (so 12 times a year).

I would suspect it will be quite a learning curve to get to grips with the payroll software but once that is learnt then should be ok, unless something strange happens with tax coding, or other deductions at source, or calculations incorrect, or sick pay, other statutory payments.

If you were to change I would not do it at any point other than at the end of the tax year, so the year to date figures start from zero.

How much does your payroll provider charge? £15 per month? May be a lot given the total pay you have involved but how much is your time worth? Is it really worth changing, or sticking with things as they are until you childcare needs change.

Don't think you would need to worry about a pension, though you might want to look in to that as I expect it depends on the pay amount in any given pay period. Would you ever pay £486 or more in a month?

Could the nanny become se If only doing odd days for you?

What do the other part-time nanny jobs do? She may already be registered as SE and then you can just pay her for the work she does. It sounds very ad hoc.

thanks both. Nanny - that's the problem. It's a lot to get on top of, and I didn't know you had to do submissions every month. But the PAYG is £30 a time, which seems steep when I'm only using her for 2 days over Xmas. It's not so bad in the summer when she does 3-4 weeks, but half term etc I usually only work 2 days.

blondes - I was wondering if that was the way to go, but felt bad for putting all the responsibility on her.

Maybe you need to look at other forms of childcare - would anything else work?

Your nanny may well be able to do it as self employed if they are able to say no to requests you make and it is very ad-hoc work. If they want to run their own business is another matter though, they may not want to do so. They would set their own fee and it would be higher than what you currently pay, though it may be less in total once taking account of the payroll admin cost.

If I were them I would not want to change the current setup as they are not needing to do accounts, invoices, tax return etc.

Could do holiday club but our nanny is great, is short of baby friendly work now that she has her own child, and it means my 12yr old (too old for holiday club) has someone at home too.

I was hoping someone would tell me it was all easy to do but I guess that's not going to be the case!

some agencies do payrole - one being tinies as a huge organistion

maybe talk to them and see what they suggest

tho if she does bank work for nurseries she may be employed via them via tinies, or she may be se and employed for other nanny jobs

if she has lots of fingers in pies, she may be se

I do my own payroll for my nannies, as I do my own for my limited company for the past 18m. The free PAYE tools software from HMRC is reasonably easy to get to grips with, and they offer free webinars to help guide you setting up as an employer (their phone helpline is also good).
One of my nannies currently works some Fridays and some days during holidays (she is still training). I agreed an annualised hours contract with her, where I pay her a fixed amount monthly for an agreed number of days across the whole year, and we agree together in advance when those days will be. I have a very good flexible relationship with her, which makes it work for us.

I'm not a nanny employer but use the free Hmrc payroll software. You will need an employer ref no from Hmrc and her ni number and you will need to set yourself up on the real time Paye online system. But it is quite easy. If she's got another job you will have to set her up as a basic rate tax code which will deduct Paye which you will have to pay over. Hmrc will send you a paying in book for that and you can pay it at a post office.
You will have to do an upload to the site every month but if she is only getting low value payments you could request to go quarterly. You will also have to do a yearly submission after the end of the tax year.
I realise it sounds a lot but in reality once set up it is quite simple,
As other posters have said could you treat her as a zero hour contract employee and do a nil return in the months she doesn't work.

Hi, could anyone advise if a payroll is required for occasional baby sitting? Eg if I need a babysitter 2hr every other week do 2 days per month will I need to set up a payroll for her? Is there a limit below which this is not required? What if same person isn't available and you need to ask a different person, will you be required to have a contact for each sit and set a payroll?

The babysitter /nanny should declare the income not you as it's one offs so you aren't employing her