The Work Thread

I've just remained technically self employed as far as I'm aware so will have to do my own returns.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:

Tomous wrote:

Rocsteady wrote:Either way I've just started a new job and you definitely don't have to provide a P45.

Exactly. You can just let your employer sort it out with the tax office.

Working for HMRC, I can say that I would recommend providing the P45 if you have it.

Otherwise there's a good chance that the new employer could use the wrong tax code and you end up over or underpaying for that tax year.

The P45 would tell them what your tax code, earnings to date and tax paid to date for the current tax year are.

Just remember that it's your responsibility to make sure that you're paying the right tax, not your employer. They will just use whatever code they are told to use. The P45 tells them that. If they don't have that then they might just guess your code (risky) or put you on a Basic Rate (Where you get no tax free allowance and pay tax on the whole wage).

If you end up on the wrong code you'll need to call HMRC and discuss it with the Personal Taxes team who can issue codes to your employer to help sort any issues.

Yes, it's obviously going to be smoother providing a P45 but this is in the context of not wanting to tell your new employer your previous salary. Any tax issues can always be sorted and overpayments claimed back.

Tomous wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:

Tomous wrote:

Rocsteady wrote:Either way I've just started a new job and you definitely don't have to provide a P45.

Exactly. You can just let your employer sort it out with the tax office.

Working for HMRC, I can say that I would recommend providing the P45 if you have it.

Otherwise there's a good chance that the new employer could use the wrong tax code and you end up over or underpaying for that tax year.

The P45 would tell them what your tax code, earnings to date and tax paid to date for the current tax year are.

Just remember that it's your responsibility to make sure that you're paying the right tax, not your employer. They will just use whatever code they are told to use. The P45 tells them that. If they don't have that then they might just guess your code (risky) or put you on a Basic Rate (Where you get no tax free allowance and pay tax on the whole wage).

If you end up on the wrong code you'll need to call HMRC and discuss it with the Personal Taxes team who can issue codes to your employer to help sort any issues.

Yes, it's obviously going to be smoother providing a P45 but this is in the context of not wanting to tell your new employer your previous salary. Any tax issues can always be sorted and overpayments claimed back.

I really don't think lying about current salary is necessary. The salary you will be offered falls in the range of what is in budget and the minimum your prospective employer can get away with. Normally a job will be advertised showing the maximum amount but depending on company, that can be increased for an exceptional candidate. At the end of the day, the employer will offer you a salary based on your value to the role and current salary is pretty much irrelevant.

Often when applying for jobs they ask, though, and when your current salary is very low(ie. I dossed about a bit in eastern europe so had a poor wage but my value to companies is more than that) I'd suggest it would be offputting to them.

Not that I lied in my current role about it as I simply didn't send back that sheet with the rest of my papers and no-one has yet commented on it.

The annual rigmarole has started here about who is going to be on call for Christmas Day. I have no intention of covering it this year and under my contract I have no obligation to cover it as it simply isn't my turn but the higher ups are trying to pressure me into covering it as the other people who could cover it all have young families. If I had been given fair play about issues like this in the past I might consider it but I've been messed around over this sort of thing before so strawberry float them.


I'll still be handing in my notice in January anyway once our annual bonus gets paid so there isn't much they can do to put pressure on me. Feels good.

Christmas cover is a pain. Slightly ridiculous, but you need a rota in place so everyone is clear on who is providing cover for Christmas at the beginning of the year. A few devious sods always try to book Christmas very early in the year to try and avoid having to cover.

As a father of a young child I feel that I should have priority for Christmas leave over the barren, childless husks of my colleagues simply because reasons.

Preezy wrote:As a father of a young child I feel that I should have priority for Christmas leave over the barren, childless husks of my colleagues simply because reasons.

I agree, I feel as someone who has also got functioning sperms that it is a right of ours.

I applied for a job a few weeks ago that uses technology and programming languages I'd never touched.

I had to do a 90 minute aptitude test on their tech stack, then a 2 hour technical interview to follow.

I got the job. Handed in my notice on Friday. Finish up the last day before Christmas, then start the new place a month later. Boyeeee

Rocsteady wrote:I've just remained technically self employed as far as I'm aware so will have to do my own returns.

That doesn't sound quite right to me. Are you providing services to anyone else or actually running a business? Because if you aren't you're probably not self-employed, legally speaking. Have a look at this https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-emplo ... us-for-tax

It sounds like your employer is avoiding tax, which is kind of ridiculous given how long it took to get that job.

If you have to deal with all of that you should be charging a contractor's rate which is typically 2x the normal salary and you have no employment rights... You should be able to demand a contract of employment including statutory benefits and if they refuse they are breaking the law by denying you your rights and not paying tax.

Normally that sort of thing is an illegal employment which can be reported to HMRC. To me it sounds like a full time job with stipulated hours, responsibilities where you are required to check in at certain times an follow instructions from management etc. It is simply incorrect for that be treated as self-employment.

If I were you I'd get yourself set up with an umbrella company so that you get holiday pay and expenses at least, or get moved onto payroll. Your client then submits your hours to the umbrella company and they pay you every Friday. On your self-assessment you can then also claim the umbrella company's fee as an expense so you don't pay tax on that income. You shouldn't have to deal with any of that gooseberry fool or pay for your own holidays and sick days, because you're not running a business, you're handling all your HR responsibilities yourself because for some reason or another they can't be arsed.

I might be wrong though. You can keep your self assessment record open with HMRC and submit a self-assessment just to make sure you're paying the right amount of tax and getting any refunds, but for the type of job you seem to be doing, HMRC require PAYE employment and the law guarantees you certain rights that shouldn't be given away.

If you stay on the self-employed route you can claim some expenses to reduce your tax liability, such as a proportion of utility bills including rent and council tax, Internet etc. but I feel you should be aware this may not be the proper way of handling it if you are only working for one entity.

One pretty easy test is whether or not you would be able to send a substitute to do the work for you, if you were for example ill for some time. Self-employed people might handle things different to, for example, fire the client and just say they are not able to fulfil the service and end the relationship or delay it for some indefinite period, but it really sounds like if you did that, you would be "fired", but fired from what? You're self employed, apparently, so they can't fire you. Only you can fire yourself. If the answer is no to these scenarios, you're employed and the company has to do whatever they have to do to put you on their payroll systems.

It's worth remembering that if you're self-employed you should have accounts, bank statements, invoices and receipts made available on request for at least 5 years. It can make it difficult to get a mortgage and get certain kinds of financial help without audited accounts for 5-10 years. Should you have to worry about that or the company you're working for? You also have to sort out your own pension arrangements whereas if you're employed the company has to join you to a workplace pension scheme. If you or your employer aren't paying your NIs then you're basically being robbed of your state pension which isn't right (even if you don't earn enough to pay NI you are credited as if you did which is how you get a state pension even if you never made any money - for example by claiming jobseeker's allowance). It really isn't on and I would question the ethics of this nevermind the job security implications. At least send an email asking for clarification because it sounds like they just didn't bother to set up an actual employment for you after taking months of your time hiring you in the first place.

Green Gecko wrote:

Rocsteady wrote:I've just remained technically self employed as far as I'm aware so will have to do my own returns.

That doesn't sound quite right to me. Are you providing services to anyone else or actually running a business? Because if you aren't you're probably not self-employed, legally speaking. Have a look at this https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-emplo ... us-for-tax

It sounds like your employer is avoiding tax, which is kind of ridiculous given how long it took to get that job.

If you have to deal with all of that you should be charging a contractor's rate which is typically 2x the normal salary and you have no employment rights... You should be able to demand a contract of employment including statutory benefits and if they refuse they are breaking the law by denying you your rights and not paying tax.

Normally that sort of thing is an illegal employment which can be reported to HMRC. To me it sounds like a full time job with stipulated hours, responsibilities where you are required to check in at certain times an follow instructions from management etc. It is simply incorrect for that be treated as self-employment.

If I were you I'd get yourself set up with an umbrella company so that you get holiday pay and expenses at least, or get moved onto payroll. Your client then submits your hours to the umbrella company and they pay you every Friday. On your self-assessment you can then also claim the umbrella company's fee as an expense so you don't pay tax on that income. You shouldn't have to deal with any of that gooseberry fool or pay for your own holidays and sick days, because you're not running a business, you're handling all your HR responsibilities yourself because for some reason or another they can't be arsed.

I might be wrong though. You can keep your self assessment record open with HMRC and submit a self-assessment just to make sure you're paying the right amount of tax and getting any refunds, but for the type of job you seem to be doing, HMRC require PAYE employment and the law guarantees you certain rights that shouldn't be given away.

If you stay on the self-employed route you can claim some expenses to reduce your tax liability, such as a proportion of utility bills including rent and council tax, Internet etc. but I feel you should be aware this may not be the proper way of handling it if you are only working for one entity.

One pretty easy test is whether or not you would be able to send a substitute to do the work for you, if you were for example ill for some time. Self-employed people might handle things different to, for example, fire the client and just say they are not able to fulfil the service and end the relationship or delay it for some indefinite period, but it really sounds like if you did that, you would be "fired", but fired from what? You're self employed, apparently, so they can't fire you. Only you can fire yourself. If the answer is no to these scenarios, you're employed and the company has to do whatever they have to do to put you on their payroll systems.

It's worth remembering that if you're self-employed you should have accounts, bank statements, invoices and receipts made available on request for at least 5 years. It can make it difficult to get a mortgage and get certain kinds of financial help without audited accounts for 5-10 years. Should you have to worry about that or the company you're working for? You also have to sort out your own pension arrangements whereas if you're employed the company has to join you to a workplace pension scheme. If you or your employer aren't paying your NIs then you're basically being robbed of your state pension which isn't right (even if you don't earn enough to pay NI you are credited as if you did which is how you get a state pension even if you never made any money - for example by claiming jobseeker's allowance). It really isn't on and I would question the ethics of this nevermind the job security implications. At least send an email asking for clarification because it sounds like they just didn't bother to set up an actual employment for you after taking months of your time hiring you in the first place.

Thanks for the lengthy post GG, I'm rather naive in tax affairs (as is probably highly evident). I'll look into it and get in contact with HR.

Let's say I get properly set up with this company, do I need to inform the government I'm no longer self employed (so no longer need to do returns in future) or will that happen automatically?

1cmanny1 wrote:Do any of you fellow office plebs use any interesting software? Apart from MS Office?

Here are some I use:

PowerBi - could be a good dashboard tool, I am still playing with it.
Asana - Project Management software. Really need a team for this to thrive.
Toggl - Free timer for pretending to be a lawyer. Seriously, weekly dashboards seeing where you are spending your time is great.
Google Forms and Sheets - this isn't very uncommon, although you can do cool stuff with scripts.
Matlab - User friendly "pretend to be a data scientist" tool.

My entire company is pretty much built on Excel. I hate it so much. I desperately need a dashboard/database solution, I am hoping Power BI is on the right track.

Why do you dislike Excel? It's awesome, one of the best things about it is no matter what you want to do you can almost always find some tutorial online to show you how to do it, or piece together the information from a few different sites.

I've seen some examples of PowerBI, it seems pretty good but I've only seen it in action in demo's.

For data management/statistical analysis I've used:

STATA: Horrible, all command line interface pain in the ass to work with

SAS: Not as terrible as STATA as there is a GUI version (costs extra), but it's a steep learning curve. It is nice though that each action you do is tracked in the form of a web/flow chart layout. So when you are done a project, you save this along with whatever your final dataoutput is and then can easily track what you just did.

SPSS: Pretty good, has both GUI and command line options, it's the most similar to to Excel. It's also fairly well documented and in general you can find examples for anything you need online. I might be biased as well as I have the most experience with it.

Other software I use regularly is:

ArcGIS: Mapping software, also comes with a database management tool. The mapping software is as good as it gets in the field, the database stuff is kind of crap you're better off doing what you need somewhere else and then importing your files as maps.

Rocsteady wrote:Let's say I get properly set up with this company, do I need to inform the government I'm no longer self employed (so no longer need to do returns in future) or will that happen automatically?

It won't happen automatically because there are situations (certainly where I've been) been where you can be both employed and self-employed or for example you receive income from shares, dividends etc. Worse case scenario is HMRC see new information coming in about your employment via PAYE and decide to treat it as your second job (with your self-employment your first job, even if you're obviously earning nothing from self-employment), meaning you get taxed at 20% for 100% of your income . This is exactly what happened to me when I was contracting briefly and I was owed about £500 in tax for just a few days of work and I didn't get it back for 12 months when I filed my return. You can opt to tell HMRC you are no longer trading as you are employed and they will close yours self-assessment record, but you can choose to leave it open as sometimes it's faster to get a tax return that way if your tax affairs are complicated (by telling them exactly what is what instead of them fumbling over some data on a Spectrum ZX). But if you're working for one company for the foreseeable future I wouldn't say it's worth it, do you really want to do all your new year celebrations and then have to wake up to your taxes with the rest of us?

You can call them again whenever and if ever you start freelancing again. You need to do that within 3 months of soliciting new business. You'll then only need to maintain tax records from that date until the end of the tax year (March 31), submit that by 31 Jan the following tax year so it will potentially cut out work really, it's certainly worth doing.

Say for example you don't take your holiday, or if your employee is decent they make you take it. Without proper employment you're going to lose minimum 21 days statutory holiday plus public holidays (usually 28 days), that's quite a lot of money.

No brainer really, provided your employer isn't being difficult, in which case I'd cover yourself by going through an umbrella company that employs you instead because otherwise you're caught within IR35 legislation and HMRC will make either your employer or your life difficult and want to blame somebody for that, they certainly wouldn't be happy discovering that they owe 6 months in back taxes or whatever. I'm still not really sure whether it's the employer or the employee's fault if tax affairs aren't managed properly, I lean towards it being the employer's responsibility because they should know what they're doing and gooseberry fool is complicated, but sometimes they really don't have a clue and you end up with stupid problems like the time I had £5k income on my tax record that never existed and HMRC attempted to fine me for it. Turns out my employer had strawberry floated things up when I was employed by their limited liability partnership and limited company at the same time or something.

Since then I like to make sure I know what's going on because nothing is less fun than getting a load of brown envelopes through the door claiming you are a tax dodging scum bag and you'll pay £100 fine + unpaid taxes and £1 every day it isn't paid or go to court etc etc, strawberry float that.

If a work place puts a mandatory course on that you don't agree with I'm assuming I can't refuse no matter the reason?

Its not been confirmed but there are suggestions of a unconscious bias course which imo are a waste of time and can have the opposite outcome and are very inaccurate.

I wouldn't want to take part on principle but if made mandatory don't think I'll have a choice and no doubt won't look favourable for me if I voice my concerns.

Sounds like you’ve got a bit of an unconscious bias about this unconscious bias course.

I recommend you taking an unconscious bias course, it should teach you a few things.

Frank wrote:Sounds like you’ve got a bit of an unconscious bias about this unconscious bias course.

I recommend you taking an unconscious bias course, it should teach you a few things.

What If Ive already done it unconsciously

Slayerx wrote:If a work place puts a mandatory course on that you don't agree with I'm assuming I can't refuse no matter the reason?

Its not been confirmed but there are suggestions of a unconscious bias course which imo are a waste of time and can have the opposite outcome and are very inaccurate.

I wouldn't want to take part on principle but if made mandatory don't think I'll have a choice and no doubt won't look favourable for me if I voice my concerns.

FFS, this BS really exists. Just say you have common sense so no need for the company to waste money on some BS course. If that doesn't work, just tell them some random poster on a games forum you frequent during work hours said the course is unnecessary.

Death's Head wrote:

Slayerx wrote:If a work place puts a mandatory course on that you don't agree with I'm assuming I can't refuse no matter the reason?

Its not been confirmed but there are suggestions of a unconscious bias course which imo are a waste of time and can have the opposite outcome and are very inaccurate.

I wouldn't want to take part on principle but if made mandatory don't think I'll have a choice and no doubt won't look favourable for me if I voice my concerns.

FFS, this BS really exists. Just say you have common sense so no need for the company to waste money on some BS course. If that doesn't work, just tell them some random poster on a games forum you frequent during work hours said the course is unnecessary.

Its all geared around equality and diversity which I feel is a waste of time but it's something businesses have to show there onboard with.

Green Gecko wrote:

Rocsteady wrote:Let's say I get properly set up with this company, do I need to inform the government I'm no longer self employed (so no longer need to do returns in future) or will that happen automatically?

It won't happen automatically because there are situations (certainly where I've been) been where you can be both employed and self-employed or for example you receive income from shares, dividends etc. Worse case scenario is HMRC see new information coming in about your employment via PAYE and decide to treat it as your second job (with your self-employment your first job, even if you're obviously earning nothing from self-employment), meaning you get taxed at 20% for 100% of your income . This is exactly what happened to me when I was contracting briefly and I was owed about £500 in tax for just a few days of work and I didn't get it back for 12 months when I filed my return. You can opt to tell HMRC you are no longer trading as you are employed and they will close yours self-assessment record, but you can choose to leave it open as sometimes it's faster to get a tax return that way if your tax affairs are complicated (by telling them exactly what is what instead of them fumbling over some data on a Spectrum ZX). But if you're working for one company for the foreseeable future I wouldn't say it's worth it, do you really want to do all your new year celebrations and then have to wake up to your taxes with the rest of us?

You can call them again whenever and if ever you start freelancing again. You need to do that within 3 months of soliciting new business. You'll then only need to maintain tax records from that date until the end of the tax year (March 31), submit that by 31 Jan the following tax year so it will potentially cut out work really, it's certainly worth doing.

Say for example you don't take your holiday, or if your employee is decent they make you take it. Without proper employment you're going to lose minimum 21 days statutory holiday plus public holidays (usually 28 days), that's quite a lot of money.

No brainer really, provided your employer isn't being difficult, in which case I'd cover yourself by going through an umbrella company that employs you instead because otherwise you're caught within IR35 legislation and HMRC will make either your employer or your life difficult and want to blame somebody for that, they certainly wouldn't be happy discovering that they owe 6 months in back taxes or whatever. I'm still not really sure whether it's the employer or the employee's fault if tax affairs aren't managed properly, I lean towards it being the employer's responsibility because they should know what they're doing and gooseberry fool is complicated, but sometimes they really don't have a clue and you end up with stupid problems like the time I had £5k income on my tax record that never existed and HMRC attempted to fine me for it. Turns out my employer had strawberry floated things up when I was employed by their limited liability partnership and limited company at the same time or something.

Since then I like to make sure I know what's going on because nothing is less fun than getting a load of brown envelopes through the door claiming you are a tax dodging scum bag and you'll pay £100 fine + unpaid taxes and £1 every day it isn't paid or go to court etc etc, strawberry float that.

Thanks for all the info, think that could well prove to be very helpful for me in the future.

No problem, just glad I've had stuff not exactly figure itself out in the past and been on the wrong end of both personal and corporate tax affairs. gooseberry fool used to confuse the hell out of me when I first started getting into work and getting taxed the wrong amounts, so I read a lot up on accounting websites and gov.uk/HMRC (when they were separate sites). My girlfriend's also had problems switching jobs and the people that technically hire her (local council or school or academy etc) keeps changing.

I don't recommend anyone ever does more than 1 job unless you want to keep an eye on these things, it's amazing how many people don't know what's going on - especially employers who depend on accountants if they don't hire any. Also had people work illegally cash in hand and I don't think that's a great idea, it's harder and harder to feign ignorance in this climate with the gov cracking down on individuals (especially the self employed) while giving zero strawberry floats about international corp tax avoidance.

They're pretty good at tackling min wage problems though, there have been some interesting news about stings there. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/reve ... nimum-wage

She doesn’t deserve the National Minimum Wage because she only makes tea

Some people are just hopeless sorting out their tax when they're supposed to tho

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hmrc ... for-201314

I had an argument with my wife and went to Italy for 5 years