Hello all, thanks for the add here. Apologies if my questions have been asked before but every situation seems different.
I am a new pass class 1 and I’m lucky enough to have found some ad-hoc work straight away. I’m currently self employed in the film/photography industry, but work is sporadic and relies on the weather all the time, very hit & miss, hence me wanting to drive when filming gigs are slack. Question is: how do I keep log of my hours? I work weird times, it’s never 9-5, some days sat at a desk, some days out all day, some days doing the school run and walking the dog and now some days driving. Outside of the tachograph, no one else but me knows my hours.
are you self employed as a photographer?? ie you pick the work and hours you want to do?
even if you are surely you keep books and money comes and goes from your bank accounts.
broadly anything you get paid for is work and needs to be recorded as such.
Yes self employed photographer. Example is I’m working on a project now that will take about a month in all but gets invoiced at the end. Every day is different, different locations etc and then sitting down editing stuff on return, sometimes at 6am, sometimes a I bash through editing until 10pm. Would keeping hours written in a diary do?
i appreciate the hours are flexable and you need travel time etc and might end up putting 20 hours in. what im saying is those 20 hours need to be recorded.
if your work is invoiced at the end of the project you obviously keep some record of work done and time taken to know what to invoice.
what im trying to say is if there is a record of hours done somewhere you can bet your bottom dollar someone somewhere will find it if the sticky stuff hits the fan. If that happens the company your driving for will wash their hands and the ball will be in your court.
OK so realistically I can get a diary and log hours that way? I’m not wanting to break any rules, just don’t know how this works, Thanks
No, a diary isn’t sufficient. There’s four ways to do it:
- back of an analogue chart, include your tacho card number
- back of a print out - it will have the tacho card number on it
- an actual manual entry via the tacho
- an attestation letter, probably the best option for your situation.
https://www.rha.uk.net/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=5MaDi1NLdRc%3D&portalid=0
Be aware that although there is no problem being self-employed for a non-driving role, no law-abiding company will offer you work as as a self-employed driver unless you own the vehicle you are driving; those that do are the cowboys.
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OK got the bit about the recording of work, but the bit about being a self employed driver…there are loads of people doing ad-hoc work as an add-on to their other activities, either direct or through agencies. Is this wrong?
Quote
“You can be both employed and self-employed at the same time, for example if you work for an employer during the day and run your own business in the evenings.”
You can be self employed in photography, but also be employed as a driver.
As said, if you don’t own the truck, 99.9% sure you are an employee.
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Agency work is a different situation because the Agency is considered to be the employer and the person the work is done for is the client. Any decent agency only works on PAYE.
What I was referring to is the so-called LTD driver who (wrongly) considers their self self-employed for tax purposes. There is a long history of this in the industry, but the authorities are clamping down on this. The easiest way for them to do this is to shut down the activities of the operator (by revocation of the O-licence the haulier needs in order to run vehicles). There are some operators still “getting away with it” but their days will be numbered, and no decent agency entertains LTD drivers these days.
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To add to the complication my company is LTD, so technically I am not self employed because I work for the LTD company. My head is now starting to spin.
So you’re a self-employed photographer who has formed their own limited company?
Where’s the logic in that? A mate of mine has been a full-time professional industrial photographer for more than 20 years, operating as a sole trader.
Was a partnership, accountant advised us to go LTD over 25 years ago, been that way since.
OK, no doubt he had a sound reason for that, but I can’t see you could lose your house over a client unhappy with his images, but I guess that might depend on the client.
If you’re wanting occasional driving work you’ll most likely be going through an agency so you’ll be be PAYE for that. I dare say your accountant will have a way to use your LTD status to some advantage re PAYE
Seems to have worked out OK for me and my work buddy over the years, dividends and wages, we sometimes handle big jobs, sometimes (last 2 years) it can be feast or famine.
Accountant has advised to keep all wage slips from agencies and declare at the end of the year. Thing is I’ve started working directly for a small local haulage firm that isn’t an agency. Not sure what the score is there.
If they have any sense you should be on PAYE, if not then they are taking the risk of being caught out and having to pay the taxes you should have paid
Just spoke to them and their accountant is sorting PAYE, so all good there.
Doing a bit of research on time keeping, plenty seem to be using time keeping APPS, is this an acceptable way of keeping up with non-driving work?
DVSA and Police only accept those four methods I mentioned earlier
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Thanks for your help on this, much appreciated. Just looking at the attestation form it needs signing by my transport manager (gaffa) before driving. That won’t happen as I pick up the truck from the yard myself and no one else is there. It seems that I can fill in times on the back of a tacho roll and no one else has to verify them, or do an attestation form and the gaffer has to verify it. Or do a friggin massively complicated manual entry on the tacho. What a ball ache.
Back of a tacho print out it is then. Doesn’t have to be too complicated, write it out in blocks of one week eg Monday 1st to Friday 5th, start X, finish X X, breaks a,b,c,
Friday Xpm Rest, Sat 6th Rest, Sun 7th Rest, Monday 8th Rest until “start time”.
and repeat until you’ve got your 28 days recorded. Five minutes tops, and a potential saving of £200 if you’d gotten stopped without having done this.
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DVSA roadside officers have no way of proving other work you have or may not have done at the roadside, so if you do get caught out having forgotten your analogue charts / tachograph paper, it would be advisable not to offer your wedding photograph services during the encounter.
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