help...laywers please, we've messed up with nanny stuff!!

[whatnow]

we have been very very stupid and employed a very experienced nanny who said she was self employed and would pay her own tax and NI.

Now she is going to be off sick for god knows how long and i was looking around on t'net to see how we organised sick pay for her etc.

It seems that we have have been employing her illegally as we are liable for her tax and NI and she is not registered.

i am not sure what she is expecting, we had said that we would pay her 2 weeks full pay and then stat sick pay when we wrote down what we had agreed at the beginning of her employment, but i really don't know how she will get stat sick pay..

if she hasn't been payhing tax and NI we are stuffed big style
and if she has we are still stuffed because WE haven't been paying it IYSWIM.

and how can we pay her AND somebody else to look after the kids when she is off sick??

aghhhh , what now?
are we really stuffed??

It depends if she is classed as a small employer or not.

If the value of the SSP payable in any one month (tax month, 6th to 5th of any month), exceeds 13% of the employers total NI bill, then the employer can recover the difference from the NI contributions payable.

If the value of the SSP is less than 13% of the employer's total NI bill then nothing can be recovered.

Do nannywage have the legal hotline? If so then go with them!

Although, brazening it out may be appropriate - she has been working less than a year so has little in the way of employment rights (at least as far as a straight forward unfair dismissal claim would go). She said she was self employed, although it sounds as if this would not be documented any where. On the basis that you may well not be any worse off, it would be worth trying to terminate her contract with you and employing a temp nanny to cover the period before your notice ends. They are relatively easy to find IME

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Thanks SSM

I think for most domestic settings where nanny is likely to be the only employee, or perhaps one of two or three only, then if she is off on long term sickness then her SSP is likely to be more than 13% of NI bill. So Oops should be okay on that basis, provided the past NI payments can be sorted out.

Ring the aforementioned people anonymously on Monday and see what they say. Please don't worry though. This is easier said than done. Good luck and let us know how you get on.

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If you need to keep her on because of your own work you still have the problem that she is off sick. You have paid her when off sick before and told her you would pay off sick so whether she is self employed or not your agreement iwth her is to pay her when she is sick. I have tended to put in contracts not to pay when off sick which encourages people to turn up! Then if they've worked a while and are good I might in my discretion choose to pay something but in your case you promised to pay her off sick.

I doubt anything will arise about tax to date and if there is tax to pay it is from her wages which she has. You might have to pay employers NI I suppose if HMRE went into this but that is unlikely they would find out etc. So could you not give her notice to go immediately, find a temporary nanny for the next few weeks. Tell her that although you have occasionalyl paid her when off sick as she is self employed and as you cannot afford ot pay two people at once you cannot this time pay when off sick (or if when she is better she wants to restart you could consider it but would need medical certificates of health etc).