The Social Security Contributions (Intermediaries) Regulations 2000

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations, which come into force on 6th April 2000, make provision for ensuring that social security contributions payable in relation to employed earner’s employment remain payable notwithstanding the existence of arrangements whereby the services of the worker for another person (“the client”) are performed through another person (“the intermediary”) and not pursuant to a contract of employment between the worker and the client.

Regulation 1 provides for citation, commencement and effect, and regulations 2 to 5 contain definitions.

Regulation 6 provides that, where the worker’s services are carried out in pursuance of arrangements involving an intermediary, the worker shall be treated, for the purposes of social security contributions in respect of a calculated amount of payments or benefits made or provided under the arrangements, as employed in employed earner’s employment by the intermediary, and the intermediary shall be treated as the secondary contributor for those purposes. The regulation also provides that an officer of the Board of Inland Revenue may make a decision on whether the regulation applies in a particular case.

Regulation 7 provides the method of calculation of the amount of payments and benefits in respect of which social security contributions are payable by virtue of regulation 6.

Regulation 8 treats the amount found under regulation 7 as a single payment of earnings made by the intermediary on 5th April in the year of assessment concerned or, where one or more specified events occur in that year, immediately before that event or the earliest of those events.

Regulations 9 to 11 make provision for the case where more than one intermediary is involved in the same arrangements.

Regulation 12 contains a saving provision that nothing in these Regulations affects the operation of secondary legislation relating to agency workers.