ESM11025 | Check Employment Status For Tax: About you and the work

When completing CEST you should consider the true agreement between the parties. The starting point will usually be consideration of the written terms under which the hirer is contracting for a worker’s services. Consideration of working practices, what the parties have said to each other and the hirer’s own policies may also assist in completion of the questions.

Written terms may not provide a reliable indication of the true agreement between the parties where:

• They are inconsistent with working practices;

• They have been varied by verbal agreement;

• They do not contain enough detail; or

• They are inconsistent or contradictory

Standard terms are often designed to achieve a particular employment status outcome.

HMRC will stand by the result you get from this tool. This would not be the case if the information you have provided was checked and found to be inaccurate.

HMRC will also not stand by results achieved through actions undertaken to achieve a particular result (contrived arrangements), or through answering questions in a way that is not correct.

This would be treated as evidence of deliberate non-compliance, which can attract higher associated penalties.