The Employment Status Indicator Tool

The issue of whether a worker is employed or self-employed is often unclear. Treating a worker’s employment status correctly is important because if a business treats a worker as self-employed when they are really an employee, the tax risk falls on the business, not the worker.
Fortunately, it is possible to achieve assurance on the employment status of workers, HMRC’s website features an Employment Status Indicator (ESI) Tool, which enables the employment status of an individual or group of workers to be checked for Income Tax or National Insurance contributions purposes.
The ESI tool provides an indication of a worker’s employment status based on responses given to a series of questions, HMRC state that the result given may only be ‘indicative’.