can au pair do second job?

[redrosa]

hi, i'm a new member and would really like your help with this.
Can our future au pair take a second job? she has suggested she might look for a job in bookshop or library on her days off.
what are the pitfalls/problems with this? are there any tax/NI issues?

does your au pair manage on the pocket money you give her? we are going to pay just above the average recommended amount for London.

thanks, rosa

I can't answer the tax and NI issues, but will her days off always be the same ones, and what about school holidays and half term when you might need her to be around?
Or times when you might want her to babysit?

Tax might be an issue - if you're paying her under £100 a week you don't need to worry about tax and NI, but if her total earnings are more than that then she'll be taxed in her second job. You might need to contact HRMC for advice about you being her main employer.

you dont need to worry about any tax or NI, if she is from EU she can do extra job in her free time, but then is only up to her and her employer(bookshop/library) to sort her NI and tax. If she is from different country, i mean non EU country she would need working visa.
I got an au pair, she does some extra job (cleaning) in her free time, which i dont mind.
I pay her £65p/w, cos she works only around 24h p/w and not to much cleaning.
Its only up to you how much you pay, and also how many works she does.
for 25h p/w is min £60 i think...

HMRC PAYE Intro only says about if you take on someone whom already has another job. It does not say what happens if you take someone on whom does not have another job and then subsequently gets another job.

MrAnchovy is probably the person you need, he may well know more about the Tax/NI situation.

If your au pair has more than one job then yes you'll have to register as her employer. This is the case whether she has the job before she starts with you or if she gets one after she starts with you. At least this is what we have done three times now with girls who worked at weekends in Starbucks and Tescos.

Her employer in her 2nd job will need to send away a P46 within the first month detailing her earnings in the tax year to date and if they don't include what you've already paid her then you're in danger of not being recognised as her primary job and they will benefit in using her tax free element in pay to her.

You will be able to use the slightly friendlier Simplified PAYE system as her earnings from you should be less than £160 per week.

thanks for info.

who is Mr Anchovy? how do I contact him?

she will normally being doing three days per week for us - the same days each week. so unless we have an illness or special situation she should have the same days off each week.

rosa

mranchovy is a frequent poster on here.

He normally pops up on most threads on here regarding tax, sick pay and other employment matters, so a thread about a 2nd job should be of suitable interest.

IMO you will need to register as an employer. I would also advise putting in the contract that you remain her main employer (and therefore get her tax free allowance) AND specify that her salary is gross just to cover yourselves.

Visa wise anyone on the tiered youth mobility visa or from most EU countries will have no restrictions. If they are Romanian or Bulgarian AND coming specifically as an au pair they won't be allowed a second job.

In case of illness etc would you expect her to work? That may be very problematic with a second job as technically she would be working outside of the hours you have contracted for and under no obligation to cover your needs.

If she does cleaning she may become self-employed, which is perfectly possible whilst being employed, but you will still need to register as an employer and possibly help her with the process.

(or he....)

Main employer generally means the job where the person works most hours - even if they are paid less for working these hours. This should support the fact you will be her main employer if her extra job is only say just on Saturday.

To clarify frakkit's point above. A Romanian or Bulgarian can have a second job if they aready have a blue card. Our au pair has a number of friends who are working extra part time jobs and they are here as au pairs for their families. If your au pair has just arrived in the UK for the first time and is working under au pair status, then as frakkit says she would not be allowed to work in extra jobs. If this is the case then it is not necessary and I strongly advise you not trying to register as her employer - this may jeopardise her au pair status as she is not your employee.

that statement above should get mranchovy over

My understanding is as Frakkit has put it - if she's over the threshold, you have to register as an employer even if you personally don't have to pay anything.

Treesa, what did the coffee houses say when you said you were your APs primary employers? I was curious how this would work in practice, if a big chain would just tell you to get stuffed. For the reason that until the AP got the job, for most people, they wouldn't already be in the system with HMRC.

TO the OP: do you know what the reason is why the AP wants the second job? Is it to top up her salary or to meet people? Or for experience?

Our friends whose AP worked at Pret began to feel like a hotel for theirs. After a while the AP job seemed to take a back seat. But she did quite a lot of hours. Another whose AP worked at the local school for a few hours a week said it worked well. Also consider things like tiredness if she is working seven days a week.

Boo .

First I have to say that I cannot give professional advice here, only point you towards information which is generally available.

Firstly, look at HMRC's instructions on when you need to register as an employer. You will see that it is important that the new employee does not have any other job when you employ them: the best way to evidence this (in case of later query by HMRC) is to get them to fill in and sign a P46 form, ticking box A or B to say that yours is their only job. If they do have another job when you employ them, you are going to have to register as an employer and operate PAYE (using the BR emergency code for them which means deducting tax from the whole of their pay with no allowance). Note also that you cannot operate simplified PAYE in this situation, not that I ever recommend it anyway.

Note that it doesn't say anywhere that you have to keep checking whether they have done any other work and register if they do - how on earth would this work in practice?

Others posting on here should also note that the P46 no longer contains any reference to 'main employer' and so it is no longer possible for an employee to trigger a transfer of their 'normal' tax code from an existing employer, this can only be done by request to HMRC (and agreement with the employers) and if the existing employer is not registered they will not grant the request.

Also, the P46 doesn't have and never has had any statement of earnings from other employment on it so there is nothing to worry about there.

So that everyone understands what happens when the au pair goes to another employer, they will fill in a registration form which has the same questions as a P46. They will tick the equivlent of Box C 'I have another job'. The employer will put them on BR and tax what they pay them.

That's all, the other employer has no interest in who their first employer is or how much they pay them, the only people that are interested are the employee and HMRC.

Of course this does mean that the employee will pay too much tax (because the remainder of the personal allowance that is not being used in the first job should be available deduct from the earnings in the second job). This can be sorted out at the end of the year by writing to HMRC sending copies of the P60s (or P45s if they leave during the year) from all jobs in the year and asking for a refund. It is in theory possible to apply for a tax code split so that tax is not overpaid in the year but I think HMRC will be very reluctant to do this where the first employer is not registered.

nranchovy - are you sure about "Note that it doesn't say anywhere that you have to keep checking whether they have done any other work and register if they do - how on earth would this work in practice?"

HMRC advice is that if they have more than one job, you need to operate PAYE.

Mabe this is advice at a particular moment in time (when they start to work for you), yet equally it doesn't say this condition doesn't hold true at any other point in time.

So lets say the first employer (i.e. that is paying the person just under the LEL) doesn't register after the person gets themselves a 2nd job. Assuming also that the 2nd employer (not realising the person has other earnings) registers as their primary employer and calculates PAYE using the persons full allowances. Then HMRC is reliant on the individual being honest in making a tax declaration where all that which was paid without deductions, is now subject to tax and NI.

Would HMRC not wish to make all employers (irrelevant of what salaries they paid) responsible for reporting a wage that is being paid? and yet I agree with you in how would this work in practice..?

You say "Assuming also that the 2nd employer (not realising the person has other earnings) registers as their primary employer and calculates PAYE using the persons full allowances"

But the 2nd employer has to get the employee to sign a statement that says 'this is my only job' (Box A or B on the P46) in order to pay with a 647L tax code (which gives the personal allowance), or if earnings are less than £97 per week doesn't have to include this person in PAYE reporting at all.

If they sign the statement that says 'I have another job' (Box C) the employer must use BR which taxes their whole earnings even if they are only paid £10 for one week's work.

So there is no chance of 'not realising the person has other earnings' - you have to ask the question and get the answer.

As to "HMRC advice is that if they have more than one job, you need to operate PAYE", no it isn't. This is your own unique interpretation.

Please note, there are restrictions for Romenians and Bulgarians on how much they are allowed to work and earn.

I'm not sure if it is my own unique interpretation. The wording on the HMRC website is below and linked here:
HMRC web page covering PAYE for domestic employees

Do you always have to operate PAYE?

If this is your employee's only job and you pay them less than the NICs Lower Earnings Limit (LEL) - £97 a week or £421 a month (2010-11) - you won't have to operate PAYE at all.

If it's their only job and you pay them at or over the LEL but below the Earnings Threshold (ET) for NICs - £110 a week or £476 a month (2010-11) - you won't have to operate PAYE on their earnings but you'll have to keep a record of their personal details, their National Insurance number and the amount you pay them.

If they have more than one job, you'll need to operate PAYE. You can use the Simplified PAYE Deduction Scheme if their earnings are below the thresholds described earlier.

As I said, it doesn't say for new employees only although you can maybe infer this especially with regard to your point about how would they practically implement this.

so, (to try and make sure I've got this right) if the au pair gets another job we must make sure that we have registered first that we employ her before she signs the registration box for the other employer. If she ticks box C and declares us as her other employer we will then lose the benefit of at least part or all of her tax-free allowance depending on how much the other employer pays her. We would then need to sort out payroll, tax etc...

Please let me know if the above is right?

I had a chat with the AP yesterday. she's not yet in the country (so not working anywhere else here yet), she's from an EU country, and she mainly wants to have something to do in the days that she's not working for us. She mentioned doing voluntary work (which we'd be very happy for her to do). So that might be solve the problem!! thanks

Question for mranchovy here relating to your question above redrosa..

Is it possible for income earned in her au pair position to be taken into account as 'other income' in her tax code that is given to her in the other job. This assumes the OP doesn't register as an employer at all (if the APs earnings are below the LEL), and the AP contacts the tax office to request her Au Pair earnings are dealt with in this way..?? If it is possible then it may be the easiest solution for the OP.

If not... then my interpretation (based on three au pairs we've had with other jobs though we've dealt with them in a couple of ways, and from mranchovy's comments above) is that (a) you can register as an employer and put in null declarations for her, or (b) if she definitely has no job when you take her on, then don?t register and let her sort it all out at the end of the tax year through her own self assessment.

Option (a) may give your au pair more opportunity to have more net pay in her hand throughout the year. Option (b) assumes you do not need to keep abreast of someone who works for you has taken an extra job (which I always thought was true but the HMRC website is a little misleading as posted above).

If you decide to operate PAYE then your au pair will receive a tax code against each job separately.

Operating PAYE means: -

1. It ensures (as long as you get in there first) you don't need to become the 2nd employer so avoid having to transfer PAYE payments to HMRC (though you?ll still need to declare null payments I think).
2. It gives your au pair the chance to contact HMRC and ask for her tax codes to be altered to allow any portion of unused allowance she has with you to be applied to the 2nd job. She could also ask for the tax allowance to be shared across each job i.e. if she was only earning a minimal amount in her extra job.

As the PAYE you need to pay is none or very little, you only you only need to submit the declarations quarterly and you can actually now put in a null payslip online to indicate you have no PAYE or NICs due to pay.

If you do get in first and are her main employer then you will initially have all of the tax allowance in the corresponding tax code 647L.
Any 2nd job will have the BR tax code (assuming basic rate of tax is being paid) and all of her earnings in that 2nd job will be taxed at the basic rate. Your au pair can then sort out her tax situation across both jobs in order not to pay too much tax (at least until self assessment would gibe her a refund anyway).

Let's say your au pair arrives and you are paying her below the lower earnings threshold (currently £97). You choose not to register as an employer because you don't need to. There is no tax or NI contributions to be made and there is no need to register her earnings using the P11 forms etc.

Later your au pair gets a 2nd job (this is assuming she is not from Romania or Bulgaria as she wouldn't be legally allowed to work as an employee for some other business). In completing the P46 declaration, your au pair ticks that she has another job.

This 2nd employer then uses the BR code and taxes her at the basic rate against all of her earnings from that employment (BR assumes all of her personal allowance is fully utilised by her 1st job). This would means she should contact the tax office and ask for her unused allowance of £125 - £70 = £55 to be transferred over into the tax code for her 2nd job.

If she waits until year end to submit her self assessment tax form and get a rebate, she will probably need to provide evidence that in her job with you, you really did only pay her £70 a week.

Ah, Treesa the HMRC page you have referred to is about the so-called Simplified Deduction Scheme. I constantly advise people not to use this scheme because it isn't really any simpler than 'proper' PAYE and the rules about when you can and can't use it are actually quite complex!

And yes, because this scheme doesn't really fit in with the rest of PAYE, HMRC make you jump through all sorts of hoops when dealing with cases that noone really thought through when implementing it, like two jobs.

As a bit of history, the then Inland Revenue introduced this scheme a few years back when the options for doing payroll were either pay a fortune for a payroll agency, pay a fortune for payroll software or do it manually using books of tables which were quite daunting (although actually fairly easy to use). There was pressure on the Revenue to ease the burden on small employers and so they introduced a simpler manual calculation. Now there are a number of free and low cost options that do the calculcation for you and replace those books of tables (including the web site and CD ROM provided by HMRC themselves), there really is no point in the 'Simplified' scheme IMHO. They really should close it for new employers and it will die off before long.

But rest assured that once you leave that scheme behind and turn to the world of 'real' PAYE, it all works nice and simply just as I say: valid P45 = code on P45, P46 no other job = 647L, P46 with other job = BR, in each case until HMRC tell you otherwise.

Now to answer the questions:

First Treesa, yes it might be possible for the AP to ask for part of her allowance to be given to her second employer through her tax code. HMRC will have to ask the AP for details of her first job and should write to the first employer to confirm these and say that if anything changes they will need to inform HMRC. They may well also send the employee a tax return. On the other hand, they might just say no, you'll have to wait until the end of the year.

redrosa that is near enough right. Just make sure she has ticked box A (or B) on the form she gives you. Nothing she does subsequently with any other employer should cause you a problem, the very worst that could happen is that she asks for a tax code split and HMRC may write to you as I have indicated above.

Reviving old thread :)

So by having an Aupair do I need to provide pay slips even if she is under no the the tax and national insurance threshold - just in case she decides to get another job in the future? Is her "pocket money" considered earnings? @mranchovy

He hasn’t been on this forum for years.

It’s very bad etiquette to post on a seven year old thread

@Cmekrru If the aupair earns under £113 per week you do not need to register as an employer so long as they have no other work when they start with you.

If they get work elsewhere, they need to tell that job that it is not their only job, regardless of the amount they will earn.

If you feel the risk of them getting another job is high, you can register as an employer and run payroll. Then your aupair could assign their personal tax allowance to a different job and be taxed at basic rate on their income from you. So agree pay as gross.

Regardless of if you register as an employer or not you can produce a simple pay statement for each time you pay them:

Your name
Their name, their national insurance number (if they have one)
Pay period, e.g. October 2017
Date of payment
Gross pay
Deductions (none)
Net pay

I think this is what I'll do. Produce pay slips. And have her agree that we are her main employer and that her pay is gross.

Thanks for the really helpful reply :).

I am very interested in this thread as I have a French au pair who started 1 month ago. I pay her £105 a week in cash. Last weekend she signed up to a temping agency and worked for one night earning £80 gross. I have seen her payslip and they have made no deductions for tax/NI. She intends to continue doing temp work of a similar nature on the odd weekend. She has already got herself an NI number. She is only staying in London for 6 months in total. Please could you clarify nannynick (or anyone!) if giving her payslips as nanny nick suggests is the simplest way to deal with this situation in terms of tax, NI etc? I am very confused about this so help would be hugely appreciated!