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Self-employed and shafted: IFS report suggests self-employed should get more social benefits and financial safety nets. Do you agree?

Journalist: Kate Steiner-Dicks, Freelance

ended 10. January 2024

This IFS report is calling for policymakers and stakeholders to address the growing vulnerabilities faced by self-employed workers. As small business owners and freelancers what type (if any) tax-funded protections would you like to see proposed for the self-employed when it comes to sick pay, critical illness and pensions? Has the UK and the wider freelance workforce reached a point and size where these financial securities must be addressed for the greater good of the global economy? Is this another policy to garner a new tax grab for independent workers?

Your comments will be potentially included in The Freelance Informer which serves the freelancer, solo-entrepreneur/founder and off-payroll contractor community.

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Debbie Porter
Managing Director at Destination Digital Marketing
My business owning journey started as a freelance Sole Trader. I'd had a corporate career for 15 years prior to deciding to have a family. I couldn't see how I could continue in a senior management position and raise my children the way I wanted to, without farming them off to nursery care. I recognise it was a privileged choice that not everyone has the option to do, but it's also one that'll forever impact my financial standing and pension pot prospects.

As an unmarried mother of two, I have no legal rights to my partner's pension. I gave up 7 years of serious career time to raise our two children to primary school age and have no regrets. However, the financial consequences of spending 7 years working around the needs of our children makes my retirement feel like a pipe dream. Now as a business owner I'm having to push the pace as hard as I can to try and safeguard my future financial wellbeing. After the hard graft of raising kids, it feels the only reward is more graft.
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Jenny Blyth
Small business owner at Storm in a Teacup Gifts
Being self-employed with a chronic health condition is a blessing and a curse. I can give myself time off to go to appointments at short notice but when I really need to take time off, I simply can't afford to.
Without the benefits given to those in employment such as sick pay I end up putting more pressure on myself to continue working whilst sick. This in turn has the knock on effect of making my condition worse which in turn places more pressure on the NHS who have to treat me.
I use an app called Penfold to manage my own pension but that's only as much as I can afford each month so I'm not currently set up to have a pension I can rely on.
The government really need to think of ways that wil support the small business community financially. We are trying to fuel the British economy, the least we could get in return is some financial security when we're sick.
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John Lamerton
Small Business Author at Big Ideas... for Small Businesses
If you don't work, you don't earn. That's the perennial dilemma of the self-employed.

If all 4 million-plus small-business owners stopped working for two weeks, our entire nation would grind to a halt. Never mind supply-chain issues - there’d be suffering, starvation, and, soon, rioting in the streets.

Yet successive governments have viewed the self-employed as nothing but an easy target for tax grabs. No support is available to help businesses get off the ground. No help is forthcoming should they struggle - or - heaven forbid - get ill and be unable to work. Yet the minute they turn a profit, the taxman is there, with his hand out.

Never was the self-employed mantra of "if it's to be, it's up to me" more true.