Employing your own personal assistant

Using someone who is self employed

You should always treat your personal assistants as employees unless you are certain their work with you counts as self-employment whereby you will ‘contract their services’. If you control the work your personal assistants do and when they do it then they are almost certainly employees.

If the answer to all the following questions is yes then the situation is probably self-employment:

  • does the personal assistant provide the main items of equipment needed for the job themselves?
  • will the personal assistant be agreeing to do a job for a fixed price, no matter how long it takes?
  • can the personal assistant decide what work to do and when?
  • does the personal assistant regularly work for a number of different people?

Self employed workers are:

  • responsible for their own insurance.
  • responsible for their own tax and National Insurance.
  • not entitled to holiday pay, sick pay or other employee benefits.

You should think carefully before treating a personal assistant as self-employed. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) may disagree with you and may decide that your personal assistant is actually your employee. If this happens you may have to pay tax and National Insurance on everything you have paid to your assistant.

You can get further information from HM Revenue and Customs on 0845 607 0403 or the HMRC website