Anyone an HMRC Status Officer? Or know someone who is?

[nannynick]

I was wondering if anyone on mumsnet worked as a Status Officer for HMRC, determining employment status of individuals.

There are several Inspectors around (deep under cover) who would have done this prior to the more recent restructuring.

So with recent restructuring, who now determines employment status at HMRC?

And a query, given you know lots about this , where someone has multiple jobs, would each be considered in it's own right, or could they be grouped together? (Tricky to answer I know, without having lots more details.) My view is that each job would be considered individually, after all some jobs may be a contract for services and others a contract of service.

Each job can be considered in its own right. Though once a person was taken to be self-employed then HMRC probably wouldn't look at every client - they would only do so if the file came up for random selection, or if attention was otherwise drawn to it eg there was only one client in a year.

So if you look at the example of a bookkeeper - this is a job which can either been done on an employed or self-employed basis. Typically once you have set up as a self-employed bookeeper and have demonstrated that that is in fact the case, then you will only be questioned on this on an infrequent basis - HMRC won't ask for details of every contract. It would be up to the person or business using your services to determine if a new contact became one of employment not services.

HMRC are also fairly pragmatic at times(!!!) They will take into account the length of a contract. Strictly there is no minimum period of employment whereby you can be exempt from all of the admin that goes along with being an employer, but HMRC will sometimes take a pragmatic view on short-term contracts (eg maternity nannies)since the cost of collecting the tax via PAYE (and more specifically the NI) outweighs the extra amount of NI collected. There are internal targets to be made even at HMRC!

Oh I know about internal targets - I'm an ex government employee

If a bookkeeper ended up working only for one client, rather than several - are you saying that their employment status could be reviewed in light of the lack of them providing their service to other people/businesses?

If a bookkeeper worked for one client for a specific amount of time, for a particular number of weeks in any given year, then would that be accessed in it's own right, or would it be considered still to be self employed, as long as the bookkeeper was also working for other clients? Example, a bookkeeper working for 36 weeks per year for one client, 5 days per week. But for the rest of the time (16 weeks) worked for other clients?