I want to tell you a story day presentation

Unfortunately Helen, my wife, has a serious lung infection, so I am unlikely to be there on Friday. But "I wanna tell you a story!", so here goes. Louise can vouch for this one, because she passed me the referral. A promotions company in Manchester provided vendors to distribute free morning newspapers at Metro stations etc, and treated them as self-employed. They had no contracts for services, and all of the factors in the working relationship pointed to employment, except that the company told the vendors to send a friend if they could not stand their pitch on any particular morning. HMRC enquired and alleged employment status, which would have bankrupted the company, given the large PAYE & NI liabilities involved. Over a period of months I persuaded HMRC, purely on the basis of the tenuous substitution argument, that the vendors were self-employed. I then set the company up with contracts for services. Two years later HMRC looked again, and accepted self-employed status within minutes of seeing the contracts. Self-employed status is a real problem if you do not deal with it correctly. We can help make sure that you do.