# Going back to FTE from self employed.



## johnnyguitar (Mar 24, 2010)

There is a very strong possibility that I am going back to being full time employed after being self employed for the last 12 months but don't really know the best way to put my business on hiatus.

I would like the business to continue to exist, either operating at the same workload but with somebody else doing all the work, or just in name with me doing the very ocassional job at the weekend - and by occasional I mean 1 in 6 or less! There are benefits to the business continuing to exist, but I don't want to get kicked up the **** on the tax.

Any ideas what the best course of action is?
Ta!


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## organgrinder (Jan 20, 2008)

What kind of business is it - a sole trader or a limited company?

If you are self employed you can ask for deferment of Class 2 NIC due to low earnings (income less than £5,025 for a tax year). However if you also have a job, your personal allowance will be used against your salary and your self employed income will all be subject to tax at either 20% or 40%. There is no legal way out of this.

If you have a company, it would be dependant on how much you were making from the small number of jobs. I doubt it would be worth the hassle.

EDIT: I should add that if you get someone else to do the work you will have to employ them which means registering as an employer and preparing weekly/monthly payroll etc.


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## johnnyguitar (Mar 24, 2010)

I'm a sole trader - I did originally plan to go limited but the more I thought about it, the more I decided it wasn't really going to happen as I didn't want to do this long term.
My intention was to do the odd small job and keep active for certain clients who have small amounts of equipment they want tested - the sort of job I can spend half an hour on on a Saturday morning.
A friend of mine suggested I effectively franchised my business, so he'd go and do some jobs and I'd be going to work full time. I suppose he'd be effectively self employed (and looking after his own NI, tax and necessary insurances), but if I was to take a percentage, I'd then have to declare that and pay tax.


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## organgrinder (Jan 20, 2008)

Your friend can only be self employed if he is running the business and making the decisions. If the orders are all coming through you and you are invoicing it to the customers and sending him out to do the work then you might have a small (but costly) disagreement with HMRC.

If your friend runs the business, does all the invoicing and gets the payments made out to him he would be self employed. Remember that he would have to have the insurance etc in his name. You could then invoice him for a percentage and both of you would be OK.


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