HMRC has always taken notice of individuals who, should often be “employed” through their paymasters in contrast to providing their services on a “self-employed” rate. This is because different tax procedure can be applied.

When a beater’s salary should be “earnings from employment” then it must be subject to PAYE plus National insurance. This process may be tedious for both the individual plus the shoot and can attract penalties if not implemented properly. Beaters and the shoot will undoubtedly wish to steer clear of this.
 

Fundamental tax requirements

An Employer should operate PAYE as well as National insurance with respect of all workers. This contrasts with a self-employed individual that should account for his or her taxes plus National insurance to HMRC under Self Assessment.

PAYE can entail extensive signing up, frequent payments to HMRC, processing deadlines as well as penalties for wrong or overdue reporting. There will also be both employers and also employees’ National insurance contributions to manage. Therefore, where feasible, it's not surprising that beater (and the shoot) would rather the beater be treated as self-employed to prevent the difficult PAYE burden.

HMRC would certainly obviously prefer most people to be processed as “employed”. NI contributions may also be higher and also expense claims tend to be more restrictive for the “employed” man or women.

HMRC approach to beaters

Within HMRC’s continued pursuit to squeeze the taxpayer further - the beater/shoot relationship has not gone unnoticed.

The work status and procedure for remunerating a beater really should be established by whether the individual is a ‘casual beater’ or not.

A ‘contract’ between a casual beater and a shoot shall be considered as one of service (“employment”) and as a result the usual PAYE obligations will need to apply. Nevertheless, HMRC recognises that practical complications can easily arise when employers have to operate PAYE for short term arrangements on small quantities. Consequently HMRC have agreed that beaters can be treated as day-to-day casuals and tax doesn't need to be subtracted provided:

i) The beater is engaged for a time period of up to a day and also the employment ends that day with no arrangement for further work

ii) The beater is paid in cash at the conclusion of that day

To make sure that the employment truly does cease in the exact same day, there can be no arrangements in place to keep the services beyond that time. But the same beater can be utilized by the same shoot once again in the future. If there was a contract (implied or formal) regarding future services then this can be a ‘contract’ and PAYE obligations would come into power.

It is important to observe that if HMRC do assess a beater as being employed, this doesn't automatically entitle the “employed” beater to the related rights of employment for example holiday or even sick pay. HMRC determination is only relevant for their collection of taxes and National insurance functions.

An extra warning to the above ‘casual’ treatment can be that it does not apply to National insurance. The employer (the shoot) will still as a result have to deduct employee’s National insurance and pay employer’s NI if the minimum NI threshold is surpass (£97/wk).

Additional obligations

Also, any operated shoot will still be required to maintain data of all paid beaters’ revenue, names plus addresses. Likewise beaters need to keep data of revenue received and paid.

Due to the specialist nature of beaters and many other countryside professions, seeking professional assistance is always suggested.

Resources

The author knows a lot about taxation being employed by Price Bailey qualified as being a Chartered Accountant in 06 in addition to being a Chartered Tax Adviser in 2008. The article author has also knowledge about VAT for shoots and has recently been successful in a case in opposition to HMRC concerning registering a local syndicate shoot for VAT purposes.