Accountants for HGV and Lorry Drivers

Four engagement models cover almost every HGV driver in the UK. They are not interchangeable, and the one you are on decides what you can claim, who claims it, and what has to be filed.

Employed HGV driver

On the haulier's payroll. Tax and National Insurance come off before you are paid. Night-out money, if you get it, is paid by your employer under its own approval from HMRC. You do not usually need a tax return, but you may still have relief to claim for costs your employer does not reimburse.

Agency HGV driver

Supplied to hauliers by an agency. In most cases the agency operates PAYE and you are taxed as an employee of the agency, even though you move between yards weekly. Being called self-employed by an agency does not by itself make you self-employed.

Umbrella worker

The agency pays an umbrella company, which employs you and runs PAYE. Your payslip should show the assignment rate, the employment costs deducted from it and your gross pay. Read it: this is where unexplained deductions and expense schemes appear.

Limited company driver

You supply your services through your own company. The off-payroll rules decide whether the engager has to tax the payment as employment income. If you drive a client's vehicle to a client's schedule under a client's operator licence, the status question is a real one, not a formality.

• A written read on your engagement status, using the actual terms of the work rather than the job title, with the reasoning set out so you can show it to an agency or an engager.
• Self Assessment where you need to file: a return prepared, checked with you and submitted, with the payment dates set out before they arrive.
• Employment expenses relief where your employer does not reimburse a cost you are obliged to meet, including the flat rate deduction for cleaning and maintaining specialist clothing where it applies.
• A check on night-out and subsistence payments you are receiving, against the rules your employer has to meet to pay them free of tax.
• Umbrella payslip review: assignment rate against gross pay, what has been deducted and under what heading.
• Limited company work where a company is genuinely the right structure: accounts, Corporation Tax, payroll and dividends, with the off-payroll position looked at before we start rather than after.

• A driver is put on a self-employed arrangement by an agency, files as self-employed for three years, and the arrangement is later challenged. The tax does not disappear, it just arrives late with interest.
• Night-out payments are treated as automatically tax free. They are not. They are tax free only where the employer holds an approval notice and runs a checking system, and the rate is a maximum rather than an entitlement.
• A driver signs up to a scheme that pays part of the money as a non-taxable allowance or a loan. If the payment is for work done, it is taxable, whatever it is called on the payslip.
• A limited company is set up on somebody's recommendation without anybody looking at the off-payroll position, then the engager deducts tax at source anyway and the company has money in it that has already been taxed.
• Employment expenses are claimed at a flat rate a colleague mentioned, with no record of what was actually spent or what the employer already reimbursed.

We quote a fixed fee before any work starts, based on what you actually need rather than a package. A single Self Assessment return with a status review is a different job from a limited company with payroll, and the quote says which one you are buying.

Tell us how you are engaged and what is outstanding, and we come back by email with the fee and the dates the work has to be finished by. Nothing is charged until you agree the quote.