Taxing times for the self-employed
To The Sunday Telegraph
I regularly take refreshment in a very ordinary country pub in a Tory/lib Dem marginal constituency. Just listening there has been an unfailingly accurate barometer and predictor of public opinion and political events. The pasty-tax Budget nonsense was sniggered at; the 2015 Tory victory and the Brexit vote were both accurately predictable.
The evening after the latest Budget, dare I say it, there was once again mention of voting Labour. Philip Hammond should stick his campaign against self-employment back in the Treasury bottom drawer whence it came. If he does not, a wise prime minister would do it for him. David Raynes, Bath
To The Guardian
As a self-employed project manager for 20 years, I can see from comments in the media from both politicians and journalists that many assume that the self-employed are paid at the same rate as the employee for the equivalent job. In general they are not. They charge more for their time to compensate for the lack of employee benefits.
I have given work to hundreds of self-employed staff across the UK, on projects at both the high end of the market in IT, and at the lower end in construction. In IT, the self-employed are paid typically £300-£1,000 per day depending on grade, broadly double their counterparts in employment. In the skilled trades, self-employed rates are generally £20-£30 per hour in the North (£30-£60 in London); however, they earn considerably more in fixedprice projects if they work quickly. This can be anywhere from 50% to 100% more than their counterparts.
So, we are more than adequately compensated for our loss of employment benefits and I think most of us wouldn’t really object to paying our fair share towards the NHS etc.
One last point for Tory backbenchers: the self-employed are not entrepreneurs starting up new businesses. In the main, we are quite happy working as individuals without the responsibility of employing people. Those entrepreneurs who start up businesses as limited companies and employ people usually pay themselves via dividends and therefore pay no National Insurance contributions at all. Graham Davies, Malton, North Yorkshire
To The Daily Telegraph
For all the huffing and puffing, members of the self-employed brotherhood know full well that expenses claimed against gross income far outweigh any modest increase in NI payments. David Dilly, Brill, Buckinghamshire