Looking for advice please

[Bomber99]

Good evening ULA
just an update
The SIL sent the follow up email this morning regarding wages/holiday pay
Within 30mins his wages were paid but no holiday money.
So I suppose the fight goes on for these.

[ULA]

Thanks for the update.

Yes if he has thr proof the accrues but untakne holiday pay is owed then it looks like a further email is required. He can reiterate that non payment of holiday pay is also an unlawful deduction of wages for which he could make a claim.

[Bomber99]

Hi all, I am back again looking for move advice.

when a vehicle is up for repossession is it lawful for your boss to send you the repossession documents to your phone.
These documents would hold the name and address of the debtors.
When the SIL received them he was told by his boss to go to that address and if the car was not there to take a photo of the property and send it back to him.
He was also told to leave a card at the property with his bosses details on.
I believe this type of work is called spotting.?

On the question of documents my SIL has never been given any sort of training in handling third party personal data.

So before the boss sent over documents with the personal data on should the SIL have been given any type of training before handling these sensitive documents and would the boss be breaking any acts or laws, such as the Data Protection Act?

If the SIL was to accidentally disclose any of these documents what action could be taken against him rembering he had had no training?

Thank you all for your fantastic help so far.
bomber99

[Bomber99]

Some good news on the tax & national insurance front. HMRC have started to investigate.
SIL contacted ICO regarding the spotting situation as described in post 48. He got conflicting replies where 1 advisor said the data protection act would have been broken in this situation and another advisor saying no act would have been broken.
Anyone got any thoughts on this?

[ULA]

Good news that HMRC are looking into the tax and NI

There are a lot of assumptions in what I am about to set and another Beagles may have a different view. However I am basing this on how some practical knowledge.

There should be an agreement in place between your SiL ex-boss / his company and the company instructing on the recovery of the vehicles regarding confidential information including personal sensitive information and how it is processed. There should be a clause within that agreement which ensures that employees etc of the ex-boss's company are covered by the processing of such information and are aware of and abide by those information processing requirements.

My view is that your SiL should have had, as a very minimum, been made aware of how the personal information is processed and understand what role he has in that and what he is therefore required to do. Part of that should be about what happens in the event he leaves the company in respect of any of the relevant data in his possession at the time of termination.

However as we know your SiL did not have a contract that would have set this out and clearly he never had any training either.

The only thing now for consideration is does he have any paperwork, information on his phone that has personal details or photos of cars of individual's whose addresses he has been instructed to visit for the "spotting" purposes?

[Bomber99]

Hi ULA
Thanks for your reply

SIL does hold some personal information on his phone. The ex boss has told him to destroy any information he has on his phone.
SIL is a bit reluctant to do this as some of the information shows he was the driver at the time of collecting the vehicle when working for the ex bosses company.
This is part of the evidence the SIL wants to use to prove he was employed by the company if that makes sense.
If he was to destroy these particular documents he feels he will lose evidence he worked for the ex bosses company.

[Bomber99]

Hi ULA

My SIL is now dealing with the HMRC regards non payment of tax & insurance
They have asked SIL for any evidence he has, that he was employed by ex boss.

The HMRC investigator mentioned that the ex boss may go down the route that the SIL was self-employed which we also think might happen.

So would the ex boss have to provide some kind of evidence to prove the SIL was self employed, such as invoices for the work the SIL had done for him, a contract etc.


many thanks

Bomber99

[Bomber99]

Also SIL asked for a couple of days holiday and this was paid at 10 hrs per day and when he put his last time sheet in he put down 10hrs down for the bank holiday of the 01/01/2024 which was paid in his final wages from the company.
surely if he was self employed they wouldn’t be paying these holiday days

[ULA]

POST # 52

Yes if the ex-boss tried to say your SiL was self-employed it would be down to him to provide the necessary evidence to HMRC.

POST #53

Exactly

[Bomber99]

Hi ULA

Thank you for your response and as usual it’s much appreciated.

Will keep you updated as things progress

[Bomber99]

Just an update

The HMRC investigation officer contacted the SIL to tell him, the ex-boss had been in contact with him to explain, all drivers engaged by him are self-employed.

We thought this would be the ex-bosses way of trying to get out of not paying the SIL tax and insurance.

The HMRC inspector told SIL he would be going into more detail with ex-boss when he meets him at some point this coming week.

Although the SIL was never given a work contract (although he asked for it on several occasions) he has sent numerous pieces of evidence and a recording to the inspector which we think shows in all probability he was employed as a recovery driver.
He also has provided evidence that he was paid holiday pay and the company had started paying fees for putting SIL through his class 2 license.

I have been doing some research and come across some similar cases and they were referred to as False self-employment.
Could SIL case been seen as the same and if so would the ex-boss be accountable for any tax and insurance the SIL owes

[ULA]

It will be down to a determination by HMRC whether the ex-employer is falsely claiming your SiL as self employed. What implications that has, if they say that is the case, for any outstanding tax and NI owed by SiL will be down to HMTV to decide.

[Bomber99]

Thank you ULA I will keep the thread updated

[Bomber99]

Hi all, hope you are all keeping well.
As mentioned in post 56 the SIL ex boss is stating all staff that work for him are self-employed and not employees.

So after some more digging we found on companies house the Micro-entity Accounts for the ex bosses company.
These accounts were signed off in December 2023 by the ex boss when the SIL was still working for him. Within the accounts it states, the average number of employees during the period was 9

So in my opinion this goes against what he told the tax investigator when he told him all of personnel working for him are self employed or am I missing something here whereby he can claim self-employed personnel working for him are employees for account reasons?

Should the SIL advise the tax investigator about this.

[ULA]

Did you SiL interact with any other people in the business? Looking at this from another perspective could the company have had a mix of employed and self-employed staff, not unheard of for organisations to sometimes have a mix of personnel.

Is your SiL in contact with the tax investigator if so it may just be emailing to let him send a link to the Companies House entry and let them take it from there.