Cleaner

your sister won't be pleased with you!

When both boys were still living here & I was working I had a cleaner. I always paid her cash. Not my business what she does with her money. She was quite elderly so I expect she was on a pension.
I felt quite guilty having an older lady doing my cleaning but she was very up-beat & cheerful on the days I was at home for some reason so I suppose she was happy with the arrangement.

If the cleaner was paying tax she would want double the £7 ph your sister pays her. Also, she is not eligible to claim benefits. That’s why we also paid our cleaner thru the lockdown.

I think we're worrying about the wrong thing .............
From today's Guardian -

Former Tory shipping minister Nusrat Ghani is taking up a £60,000 role for 7 hours of work per month at a firm leading a maritime consortium which successfully bid for a £33m grant she had lobbied for while she was serving in government.

As usual, you lovely ladies got to the essence of the issue.

Yes, £7 an hour is below minimum wage, and that is well below the government's comedy living wage that you can't actually live on, introduced by George Osborne, and even further below the TUC's unrealistically 'realistic' living wage. I forgot what they call it.

Just wanted to say, please don't worry about cleaners not paying tax.

Worry about giant corporations not paying tax. Osborne agreed to overlook 4billion of Vodafone's tax bill.

In these difficult times, when we are all, probably, unwittingly breaking some law or other related to lockdown (I'm high risk and worried) lets not confuse what is illegal with what is unjust.

Bung her a tenner an hour or more.

Thanks for listening to my first post,

Grumpy Old English in Wales.

Where is granny rebel?

I think this could be another silly wind up thread.

She definitely doesn't earn enough to pay tax. And she should charge more. £7 an hour sounds like exploitation to me.

I feel so sorry for the cleaner only getting £7 an hour she must be really desperate to be working for that pittance and then being judged for doing it, I was paying £15 an hour cash in hand and wouldn’t have thought it any Of my business if she paid Tax or not, just take a look at our MPs fiddling the tax on their high salaries, before judging this poor woman who’s trying hard to make a living.

it depends if she is working over 16 hours. she can still claim welfare benefits.... once she works over 16 hours then she will have to pay tax. but i cant see you hiring her for 16 hours plus .its ok she not breaking the law.i do voluntary work yet i cant work over 16 hours or they stop my disabilty money.

How many of us have to survive on UC or other benefits!
I admire this lady‘S fortitude and she is to be congratulated for trying to keep her head above water! Compare her with folk who invest off shore to avoid paying tax! £7 is a pittance but she needs it!! Give the woman a break !

I would say on this rate she is going to be well under the personal tax allowance and wouldn't need to pay tax. At the end of the day this is her business and not yours. £7 per hour seems very cheap to me and maybe this lady really needs the money and charges less to receive some income.

So pleased that so many people can afford £12.00 per hour! That equates to more than I earned in my last management position. I suppose it depends on the area what the going rate is.

I used to have a self employed carer. She charged £11 an hour. I didn't know how she paid tax or NI. I didn't ask. I paid her via Direct Payments.

I was told by LA that I could no longer use self employed carers.

This is due to the possibility of her not paying tax and NI.

Now she is paid £9.07 an hour GROSS. But she gets 5 weeks paid holiday and 1 week sick per year. She also gets a pension. She is actually better off.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the rules on the Government website. It is actually the responsibility of the employer to pay any tax or NI. There should also be a formal contract. There are also rules about holiday and sick pay. It is quite complex and I know most people do not bother with all that. If you want life to be simpler, employ through an agency which deals with all the legalities.

Whether one does follow the rules or not, as others have said, paying a cleaner £7 an hour is outrageous.

Is this going to be yet another thread where the OP doesn’t like the responses so doesn’t get back to us?

Wow, £7 an hour, I live in the North East and was paying my cleaner £12.50 an hour and she was rubbish at cleaning but she was a young single mum. £7 an hour is shameful.

dancingnana1

Gosh all year cleaners are cheap. I pay £60 for 2hours once a fortnight.
It was £40 for 2 hours before covid but went up to £60.She has said she will review it at Christmas.! It is not that we cannot afford it but £60 is a bit over the top.

Wow you really pay a lot. I pay £15 an hour and thought that was just central London rates

Good luck to her. I have been on benefits and its a pittance. especially if you have children If she can earn a bit more i dont blame her. Your sister is getting a good deal at £7 an hour.

Pay £12

Be careful. She maybe below the tax threshold but if not and she’s avoiding paying tax AND you / your sister know then it could be considered collusion. Whatever her age it’s below the minimum wage so, equally, your sister is ‘on dodgy ground’!

£7 an hour for any type of work is a pittance but this person has admitted that she is on benefits and doesn't want to pay tax so won't declare her earnings! That's illegal and immoral and a bloody insult to all of us who pay our taxes! Whichever way you look at this, we tax payers are paying this woman's benefits and she is defrauding the system! Disgraceful behaviour but so is the OP sister for employing her, she is complicit in this fraud as she, as an employer, should be paying employers NI contributions!

I agree that £7.00 is terribly low. Until recently I had a cleaner who I paid £13.50 an hour. She's gone to work fulltime for Tesco and I'm now using a company who charge £16.80 an hour (£14.00 plus VAT). I pay for three hours per week, so if they send three people, they work for 1 hour. If they send two, an hour and a half. But I know that everything is being done by the book - tax, NI, VAT.

Like a number of you on this post, I always believed in being honest and above board - especially when it came to tax and NI.

Now, with this Government, they have given us the opportunity to do whatever we like to bend, or even break laws - obviously in limited ways. So in the end, it's entirely down to personal choice now - isn't it?

Builders and other tradesmen have for years been quoting two prices for a job, one if paid by cheque or bank transfer, another lower price if you pay in cash. Anyone who pays a cleaner £7 an hour should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. I hope she gets a very generous Christmas bonus.

I worked in a gift shop, never got a pay rise in over 4 yrs. She paid me cash, said it worked better for her, of course it did not paying national insurance, etc. That was my job, didn't claim benefits and lucky if I got more than a day a week, normally the busy Saturday that I worked on my own. Worked out at £6.93 an hour, I'm 54 years old, but lucky I've savings I can use. She was nasty one day cos I couldn't work, so I just left as it wasn't worth it. Paying a cleaner £7.00 an hour isn't fair, it's hard work as I've been one, she would need to be on benefits to survive cos she couldn't on a small wage like that....sorry