Contractor Tax and You
If you work on a self employed basis, contracting your labour to an employer instead of being employed directly by them, then your relationship with HMRC is comprehensively different from that of a member of staff who is directly employed . When directly employed , the company deducts your tax payment from your wage packet before you are given it, through HMRC’s PAYE (pay as you earn) tax system. When employed as a self-employed person, however, you are officially self employed, and are because of this liable for doing the sums on and declaring your specific contractor tax obligation .
Contractor tax is worked out on a yearly basis , according to a tax return submitted by a deadline of January 31st for the budgetary year ending the April of the preceding year. After you have sent in your calculation and have a statement of your contractor tax payment, you stump up your complete tax bill in one go. This is one of the many differences between employed tax and contractor tax: with contractor tax you must put away a sufficient proportion of your salary to meet your contractor tax liability at the close of the financial year, when working as an employee ; your tax is automatically paid each month.
Many of those who would in different circumstances be obliged to pay contractor tax choose instead to work with an umbrella company, which hires them directly so as to take away the need for contractor tax, and bills their contracted employee for their labour. In this manner the umbrella company acts as a medium and in doing so takes away the problem of paying contractor tax, often also reducing the whole tax liability that the person is liable for.
As well as writing down what he or she expects to be a twelfth of their tax bill every four weeks or so , someone who pays contractor tax will also be obliged to make sure that their national insurance payments are up to date – these need to be paid on time so that the contractor tax payer stays eligible for the state pension once they get to retirement age.
In order to grasp a thorough understanding of your probable contractor tax bill at the close of the financial year , you might opt to use a contractor tax calculator. Contractor tax calculators are online tools that can be used to provide an idea of what your contractor tax could be. Users enter all the variables they know about their current fiscal period, such as their wage and the amount of time they are fulfilling, as well as any other sources of income, and the calculator in turn them what their contractor tax might be come the following January.