Working for a US Company in the UK

[Pickled Piper]

Can anybody point me in the right direction? US company does not exist as a legal entity in the UK. They want to hire me as an employee. What do they need to do? or more accurately, what do I need to do on their behalf so that they can hire me?

I would initially be the only employee, with maybe two more in the medium to longer term. Unlikely to grow much beyond that.

What are they legally bound to do and what would be a good idea to do?

Cheers in advance.

PP

[Eric Mc]

They need to appoint an agent so that they can operate PAYE on your salary.

[Pickled Piper]

Cheers Eric,

Do they need to register an office or anything similar?

pp

[davepoth]

It gets a bit complicated for them, depending on what you are going to do. Their people need to read the US-UK Double Taxation Treaty to make sure they aren't going to set themselves up for a massive bill.

[Eric Mc]

The simplest procedure is to have a firm of accountants or a payroll agency run the payroll for them. The agent can register the payroll administrative address as their own office address. There is no need for the American company to set up a UK based company or trading entity of any sort. All they have to do is ensure that PAYE and NI is correctly calculated and deducted from the salary they pay you - and paid over to HMRC.

The agency should make sure that all the rules are properly complied with.

If your employer intends to pay you any expenses, or any sort of share bonuses, they need to communicate what they have done or intend to do to the payroll agency so that the correct UK tax and NI rules applied and the correct declarations can be made.

Often, American companies do not take proper enough notice of the way tax treatment differs with certain types of staff payment schemes compared to the way such a scheme might be treated in the US.

[Pickled Piper]

Cheers chaps.

Pp