Paying cash for nannies

[tatalondon]

Would you give ur nanny a payrise in cash? Saying u can not afford the tax on it? Im not a parent btw . What should a nanny do if parents do this? Take it or maybe lose the payrise if not? Thx in advance

It's really terrible behaviour of the parents. The nanny is also at risk if the arrangement was discovered by HMRC (although it is the employers obligation to withhold PAYE the employees part of it is their tax obligation).

I would advise saying that you would love to accept the raise but do not feel comfortable not complying with the rules.

I wouldn't accept this. Accepting cash payments puts the nannys integrity into question. I also think parents who want to pay in cash are treating the nanny as casual labour rather than professional.

This is very, very common.

What a nanny should do in this circumstance is insist the payrise is put through paye.

What most do, is accept it ime. They're scared to lose the payrise or rock the boat by refusing. I don't blame them really.

@tatalondon

Would you give ur nanny a payrise in cash? Saying u can not afford the tax on it? Im not a parent btw . What should a nanny do if parents do this? Take it or maybe lose the payrise if not? Thx in advance

If you get caught all the penalties are on you as the employer. So no, I wouldn't.

A lot of people do give their nannies extra cash payments - overtime or bonuses, which should go through PAYE but not everybody does! Technically if discovered then the employer would still have to pay the tax (plus penalties). Basically it’s dodgy but very very common.

Very dodgey, apart from what's stated above it impacts on amounts paid for things like sickness maternity and your pension.

As pp said, it’s really common
We’ve paid our nanny in cash when she has done evening babysitting, as we would for other babysitters, and as other families do when they use her for babysitting

As long as the bulk of the salary is put through a proper payroll, it isn’t the worst thing to do a generous cash ‘birthday present’ once a year