What do you all do about paying NI and tax for cleaners? Or don't you? And what about mothers helps? Thanks

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I have recently persuaded my lovely cleaner to collect 10yo ds twice a week and bring him home to our house with her son, who is a bit younger. She does a bit of cleaning at the same time but her priority is feeding and looking after the children. I pay her £10 an hour for this (plus feed her son) and it's been on a trial basis to see if she likes it. So far this is week 2 and it's 2.5 hours x 2 so £50 a week. I want to ask her if she'll consider doing more days in Sept when dd goes to school and collecting both children (and her son still)

She has another job during school hours.

Having glanced through the nanny threads it's just occurred to me that maybe I ought to be doing something about tax / NI etc but wondered what you all do? When she was my cleaner I was paying her cash, I admit and it didn't occur to me to do anything different but then at the time she didn't have any other job.

Am I doing anything wrong at £50 a week? And is it ok that she's not ofsteded if she's in my house? TIA.

Have a look at this link www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/WorkingAndPayingTax/DG_10027015.

It sounds like you were ok when she didn't have another job, but now you/she may be liable for NI and tax on this income.

No idea about Ofsted etc, sorry...

No need for her to be registered re Ofsted.

According to the letter of the law you may have to apply PAYE (it depends whether the ttal of both jobs takes her above her tax-free amount). In practice so long as she declares the £50 if it does take her above the limit then HMRC are unlikely to have a problem. If you are not sure whether she would declare then you might be safer off going to the letter of the law, as if HMRC decide that there has been a shortfall they are obliged to come after you. Once she earns above the lower earning limit (off the top of my head somewhere near to £90) then you need to declare in order to preserve her benefits.