if I am employed and I do a single piece of work for someone else do I have to register as self-employed?

[hatwoman]

last tax year I was normal paye employed. However, in addition I did some lecturing, for which I was paid a one-off lump sum. I called the tax office and all they said was to do a tax return. they never said anything about registering as self-employed.

so nearly a year later I'm doing said tax return and it would seem I need to answer "yes" to the question was I s-e? now that I actually am s-e I know all about registering and paying your NI - but this time last year I knew nothing about that. so am now scared that I should have registered last year and am going to get hammered for some extra-ordinary NI bill. or somehow get into trouble...anyone know anything about this?

Isn't there a section on the tax return to add in any additional income after your 'employed' income? I think the most important thing would be to declare it.

Or simply ask the tax office the question again, explaining the circumstances.

Unless it was a really huge sum, I doubt the NI would be massive anyway?

I'm trying to file it on-line and, as far as I can see, haven;t even got as far as the tax return yet...I'm on "tailoring your return" so I think I'm answering questions not on the actual form, but to determine what forms I need to fill in, iyswim. help line is shut..as you would expect really at 11pm . and last time I called the bloke was pretty thick about it all and sent me a tax return form for s-e people earning £64k plus. it was about £3k ffs. as I told him....oh well, I was wondering if I might get it done tonight - looks like I;ll have to leave it til the help line's open.

extremely annoyingly if I'd got paid about £100 less I could have done a one-off payment form, rather than the full tax return. god it's a pain being honest.

Watch out - tax office less than helpful! Got a different answer from everyone I ever spoke too. Last tax year I gave up employed work 6 months in and did some freelance work. When I phoned for help with return in April told I was getting a fine for not declaring self employed within 3 (maybe a month) months of first bit of freelance work!! Fine never arrived. Pension office were alot better esp on NICS. My earnings so low that have a cert excluding payment for now plus there is something that NICS are paid if you are getting child benefit. I am still pretty confused but staggered through a paper application and am dreading the whole thing next year!! Like you I couldn't advance on line form until self employed status officially logged. Not much help but a few pointers perhaps. Also I heard that some accountants do returns for free and get a sum back from IR. Never researched that one but it may be worth investigation...good luck

thanks hellenback. I'm not worried for this financial year as I've gone what I think of as properly s-e - ie I resigned my normal job. so because I thought of myself as s-e I looked into it and learned about the registering business and paying ni etc. and thanks to lots of helpful mn-ers I got some good pointers about record keeping (not that my business is remotely complicated). It's just this one off piece of work last year. It never occured to me that you could be both employed and self-employed. I haven't got round to calling the tax office yet as was busy today. as I am all week....I just know I'll end up in a panic on deadline day...