Temporary worker in the UK

Can I split the earnings in the UK between overseas and UK entities for NI purposes

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My client is expecting to have a worker coming from a Singapore subsidiary of the group they are in.  The temporary business visitor rules for someone here for less than 90 days will mean that National Insurance would not apply to the earnings if the worker remains under the control of the overseas employer.  However, it appears that they will be sometimes working under the control of the UK company.  Does that mean that the whole of the earnings would then be subject to NIC, or can the earnings be split in the proportion of the duties carried out for each entity?

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By paul.benny
13th Mar 2020 16:37

Paula-AT-[*** wrote:
]...However, it appears that they will be sometimes working under the control of the UK company. ..

Appearances can deceive.

Without more information, it's impossible to tell but my first reaction is that you might be overthinking it and the worker actually remains under control of the foreign entity.

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By Paula@Butt
13th Mar 2020 16:51

The duties are to be split between work carried out for the Singapore company and work carried out for the UK company. For a worker here more than 60 days you effectively look at the management and control, rather than the economic employer. I am just not sure what happens in these mixed scenarios

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By David Heaton
14th Mar 2020 13:32

I may be missing something, but aren't you confusing the PAYE and NI rules? Where do you get 90 days from?

Reg 145 of the NIC Regs says the fact that the foreign worker is employed temporarily in the UK does not trigger UK NICs for the first 52 weeks provided he/she is
(a) not ordinarily resident (now only an NI definition),
(b) not ordinarily employed in the UK,
(c) pursuing an employment that is mainly outside the UK for a non-UK employer with a non-UK place of business, and
(d) only in the UK 'for a time'.

Only if you don't meet those conditions do you need to think about apportionment of earnings between UK and non-UK before week 53.

Being supervised by the UK host doesn't make the worker a UK employee if the employment contract remains overseas and there's no employment contract with the UK company. After 52 weeks, the UK company is deemed to be a host employer even if the contract remains with the non-UK entity, but it's not the actual employer unless it takes steps to achieve that (and the immigration/visa/work permit situation usually means that it won't do so).

The point of Reg 145 is not to collect revenue for the Exchequer or NI Fund, it's to stop people getting sucked into the UK NI regime when they're not going to be here for long enough to benefit. That's why you get a 52-week exemption for inbounds and a 52-week continuing liability for outbounds who have a real connection to the UK and its NI regime (ordinary residence and a UK employer, in simple terms). The EEA rules used to give a similar automatic year of continuing home affiliation and host country exemption to posted workers, but the 2010 regulations made two years the standard. For Singapore, it's 52 weeks.

The PAYE rules are different, but that's not what you asked about.

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