self-employed nanny ????

[Bobbinogtastic]

Hello, bit of advice please !

Have always used nursery and childminders up til now but now decided that having the kids looked after in our own home might be better for various reasons, so am currently in process of advertising / meeting nannies (live-out).

To be honest, having not gone down this route before the whole thing of drawing up a contract, organising their tax and insurance, etc etc TERRIFIES me ...... so I was wondering about finding a nanny who is self-employed, ie. more like a childminding contract, but working in your home not theirs.

Is this type of arrangement ever done in "nanny-world" ? Anyone got experience of this ? What are the pros and cons?

Thanks for any thoughts.

cons are the tax man finds out and you get screwed
they work in your home for you only = they are your employee

I think they would have to work for a LOT of different families in order to be classed as "self employed"

surely the taxman needn't get his knickers in a twist as she'll be registered self-employed paying her own tax? obviously the salary i offer her will take this into account. find it hard enough doing my own tax return let alone some-one else's !

ok, so say we do employ her in the traditional way, how do I draw up a contract ? Is there a model contract anywhere ?

she can register as self employed but it won't make any difference

nanny tax

I'm a nanny and have looked into self-employment and was told it couldn't be done - you can't just choose to be self employed, it depends on the nature of your relationship with your employer.

There's some information on whether someone is employed or self-employed here.

All these apply to a nanny, so they are employed:

Do they have to do the work themselves?
Can someone tell them at any time what to do, where to carry out the work or when and how to do it?
Can they work a set amount of hours?
Can someone move them from task to task?
Are they paid by the hour, week, or month?
Can they get overtime pay or bonus payment?

If you use a payroll company like Nannytax, PAYEforNannies (there are several out there) they will provide sample contracts I think, and they deal with all the tax, payslips etc.

if this nanny works for you permament position, then you are her employer and the nanny cant be self employed as will be illegal and you could face a £3K fine or possibly 6ths in prison

Two examples of a nanny contract. You will need to adapt them to your situation. Look through message posts on here about the sort of thing that comes up, also for latest information about Holiday Pay, Sick Pay SSP, Maternity Pay SMP (only applies if nanny is female).

Guide to paying someone for the first time (PDF) - at first it looks frightening but once your head around it, it's fine. You can also leave it for a payroll company to do for you - PAYEforNannies seems good and not huge cost.

If you want a nanny whom you can tell what to do, then in my view they won't be self-employed. If you used a childminder, you would not be able to tell them what to do... instead you would be the service user and the childminder would dictate their terms to you.

find it hard enough doing my own tax return let alone some-one else's !

You won't be doing her tax returns, that will be her own responsibility. You just need to give her the documents for doing tax returns (P60/P45). You'll need to file a P35 annually. If you use a good tax agency, they'll do all this for you.

You can't self employ a nanny

Don't worry, tax etc is a breeze with nanny tax
you can get copies of contracts off the web

make sure you have insurance too - employer insurance - normally part of your household insurance but they may not know

Nanny tax can help with this too

or employ nanny through agency - bit more expensive but they do all the bits for you