3 ms·
I'm not intimately familiar with UK labor laws, but isn't they key difference between contractor and a "disguised employee" is that who gets the payment money?
by kbart 9y ago
I'm not intimately familiar with UK labor laws, but isn't they key difference between contractor and a "disguised employee" is that who gets the payment money? If you get all the payment (excluding tax etc.) for a work done then you are contractor, if the third entity takes a payment for your work and pays you percentage of it, then you must be employee and that third party - employer - is responsible for taxes, insurance and other duties mandated by labor laws. The latter part is what Uber tries to avoid at all cost. For the same reason employment agencies are also not allowed to take fees for finding a job and required to pay no less than minimum wage[0].
0. https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/agency-workers/can-your-agency-charge-you-fees/ https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/agency...
- vidarh 9y agoI think roughly, you come out right if you think the way you're doing. But it's a bit more subtle in that they're going after two different types of abuses: 1. Agencies that want to rent out contractors rather than contract out employees even when they treat these people as employees. 2. Relationships where one or both sides want an employee to be a contractor to benefit from tax savings. Uber seems to fall largely in 1, while e.g. IT contractors sometimes fall in 2, or is at risk of falling in 2. In our case the consideration tends to be that tightening the rules means there's a whole checklist of things that makes it more or less likely that HMRC will deem us to be de facto employed or subject to IR35 (making us pay taxes similar to if we are in employment). For #2 and to avoid IR35 there are a whole lot of considerations such as what costs we incur, whether or not we use our own equipment, whether or not we have sales and marketing costs; whether we employ someone; how many clients we have; if we have our own office for the company etc. that centre around whether or not the company has an existence independent from any given client. The reason this is important for us too, is that one avenue for a business like Uber to avoid problems with #1 is to try to restructure around not pretending that drivers clients are the people they drive, but that their client is Uber but that they're still independent. If they try stunts like that, it may result in rule changes detrimental to other, genuine contractors too.
- Cakez0r 9y agoIt's determined based on several factors like whether you set your own schedule, whether you use your own equipment, whether you have a manager, whether you have autonomy to complete your work how you see fit. There are no hard-and-fast rules though, and from my experiences, people completely ignore it (in software contracting). See https://www.gov.uk/employment-status/selfemployed-contractor https://www.gov.uk/employment-status/selfemployed-contractor