Freelance /self employed panic thread

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Good idea for thread though perhaps remove the word 'panic' from the title.

There's enough of that all around.

Well I'm certainly panicking.
I've been told I'm being paid for 1 more week then I'm done.

Same here, everyone is panicking right now.

There must be others out there affected by covid19 and Brexit.

And the off payroll rules that have just been rolled back. Discussion in the freelance thread.

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Her work, as I understand it, is more "oh hey company, I think you need to do some work on this. I can help here. It will cost xyz"

Yeah that’s discussed in that thread because it’s much harder now to get that kind of agreement - with big companies, anyway. SMEs not quite so much.

Depends on the class of organisation and the type of work she does I guess.

I certainly wasn't before all this shit, so I'll have to see what I'm entitled to... Which is normally pretty much nothing.

Easy for me to say because I’m not self employed any more, but it’s a good time to be as flexible as possible and diversify as much as you can. There will be a lot of new opportunities because of the new situation and it’s worth keeping an eye out for those. Don’t forget the reason you’re self employed: for most it’s because you didn’t want to be tied to anyone. Capitalise on that.

I'm not panicking but I'm a bit fucked because of nursery closure. work has been steady but as of next week I can't actually do any. and my wife's just taken a 50% pay cut to switch careers. we'll get by

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Don’t panic, a lot of people jumped early. There may well be more opportunities than you think. I’m not London based but I am seeing an upturn in advertised jobs. Still need to get one mind.

Chiming in here.

Im Self employed Assurance person, missus is a self employed PT.

3 months for us may be doable by selling family silver but much longer is going to be a nightmare.

Some points.
Mortgage break. If you have one, use it.
Universal credit - Its there, don't be proud, its fuck all in the grand scheme of things but start now if its valid (5 week lead in).
Announcement coming this week fingers crossed about govt payment scheme beyond UC (in other countries this has been 75% of last 3 years taxable profit) knowing this bunch of arsehats it'll be 80% of last years salary. Lets see.
Haven't been able to check but i believe there is an extension date for paying tax for this year. Again lets see.

Going through checking money in and out this weekend.

Keep safe all.

As a cross border commuter (live in Slovakia, work in UK) I'm basically fucked at the moment as I can't get to the UK. It's not like there's even a shortage of work in my profession (NHS nurse). I just had to cancel 150hrs work for the end of march and begining of april, was meant to be travelling tonight. As bank and agency staff I only get paid when I work, receiving my last pay from Feb on Monday then keeping fingers crossed things relax over here soon.

On the plus side there'll be work for me when I finally can get back and at least I'm not in London at the moment so have plenty of toilet roll and pasta on hand.

We are both freelance self employed. This year I was coming back to work after a bit of a sabbatical. My partner is like @chalfie 's the main breadwinner and the project she had been working on is potentially drying up. Could be interesting times ahead, but flip side is there are loads of things we can be getting on with here and there is a potential new business plan that she is working on too.

But it is cause for some concern.

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I've worked with people who are cycle instructors and it's looking like the evidence they would need to show they are self-employed(in employment law as well as tax law) and had agreements to deliver work they won't have alongside the evidence they need to show they worked for someone as an off payroll worker(not in employment law but in tax law) they also won't have. IMO it makes it very difficult to have successful interaction with any sort of benefits without that paper trail which will leave lots of people I know rather fucked.

If whatever the government put together needs any level of detail whatsoever beyond showing an amount of money exchanging hands many have nothing to show and will likely be put in a position with no payments while employment status is argued to determine if what they should get comes from/via the company that they worked for or direct from the government.

I'd suspect many other types of work have the same situation.

Can you work locally? Everywhere needs nurses, right?

Thanks for the reply. It's a good point however we only moved here last summer and i'm not really good enough at the language yet to be of any use.

Furthermore nursing is a strictly regulated profession, all my qualifications and professional registration are to practice in the UK, I expect it's a lengthy process to get it all translated and notarised etc and then many countries expect you to do conversion courses and exams before you can obtain registration there. For this reason I hadn't really looked into working here, even before the CV situation. I found it easier to head back to the uk every few weeks and condense my hours there.

If things get really desperate I could probably find my way back to the uk on the basis I'm a citizen and frontline health worker, although I wouldn't feel great leaving the family at a time like this.

Yeah it's pretty obstructive. Surely HMRC could just produce an estimate of average income from your previous tax returns and tax code if they wanted

ah, yeah. thought it might have been the other way around - local qualifications but switched up for UK agency work. I think you could get back in to the UK - but definitely not your habitual commute, so can understand not wanting to leave family.

Even if they do that won't have them paying out, I'm sure both possible benefits will be aware people could possibly attempt to claim from both and so neither will pay out. If they decide the employers should pay and direct people to them but they have then missed the window for funds or already claimed alleging far lower staff numbers and earnings than they would really need to cover payments then that all goes crazy too.

My current work I had to put in a tribunal claim at the start of the year, employment status is disputed as part of that. I've since found other work, they are paying me and have pledged to increase my hours if they can(crazy given the circumstances but they are great people) so I'm going to be ok and most likely won't need to claim benefits, if they claim stuff and that makes up part of what they have to put in my pay I've no idea.

The wider picture of how the schools that will lose 2 months+ teaching time, so will have no time when they reopen to do noncurricular activity such as cycle training for the foreseeable future, I don't think has hit home yet.

How if at all cycle training will even retain skilled instructors I've no idea either. Outside of London already has a shortage and within London will join that as people now take up other work with more job security or just retire. We don't really have any industry leaders or innovation, the training providers have all taken to copy+paste(sometimes literally) from other training providers, the result of this is we don't have anyone looking ahead or really developing the industry they just put in near identical bids on contracts to undercut eachother so unless DfT or councils/schools hand something to them on a plate we won't get it. Even the work that was well paying like safer urban driving the training providers have noticed it's another place they can expand and so they have all undercut on bids and that's now just as unsustainable as other parts of what they do.

It's really scary times, I worry for colleagues firstly as I know so many if any will fall ill(the idea of 1 in 50 of people I know dying is crazy) and then if people will fall be left destitute.

https://covidcredit.uk/
Some fellow Fintech mates have got this up in just 24h - on track to release the tool on Monday and engage with gov. The connection to John Glen (economic sec to the treasury) is already there

To the familiar faces, this is braker btw

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