There is a point in every growing channel where you stop being the whole operation. Usually it is the edit — twelve hours a week you would rather spend filming — so you find someone, agree £1,500 a month, and they start on Monday. No contract, no payroll, just an invoice at the end of each month.

That arrangement is either completely fine or a slow-building tax liability, and which one it is has nothing to do with what you called it. Here is how to tell, and what each route actually costs at 2026/27 rates.

Employment status is a fact, not a paperwork choice

You cannot make someone self-employed by agreeing that they are. HMRC looks at how the working relationship actually runs. Its own indicators say a person is probably self-employed if they bid or quote for work, are not under direct supervision when working, submit invoices, are responsible for their own tax and National Insurance, and get no holiday or sick pay.

Run your editor through that list honestly. Someone who edits for six other channels, quotes per video, uses their own kit and disappears for three weeks in August is a supplier. Someone who works only for you, to hours you set, on a rota you decide, using a laptop you bought, who has never invoiced anyone else in their life, looks like an employee whatever the invoice says.

The reason this matters commercially: where PAYE should have been operated and was not, HMRC pursues the engager — you — for the tax and National Insurance that should have been deducted, plus interest and penalties. Your editor does not carry that risk. You do.

The blunt test If you would be annoyed that they took a Tuesday off without asking, they are probably an employee.

Where you are handed a free pass

One useful quirk: if the person you are paying works through their own limited company, the off-payroll working rules put the status decision on them, not you. HMRC's guidance is explicit that where a worker provides services to a small client outside the public sector, the worker's own intermediary is responsible for deciding their employment status. Creator businesses are small clients. So an editor invoicing through their own company is the cleanest arrangement available to you — keep their invoices, keep a short written agreement, and the status question sits on their side of the line.

Three ways a creator pays for help, and what each one costs A decision tree: who are you paying — an employee, a UK freelancer, or someone working abroad — leading to payroll and pension duties, a simple deductible invoice, or an overseas supplier with a VAT registration trap. You pay someone to help you make content Works only for you, hours you set UK freelancer, own kit, other clients, invoices Lives and works outside the UK Employee PAYE before first payday Employer NI 15% over £5,000 Pension 3%, 5.6 wks holiday £12.71/hr minimum (21+) Self-employed supplier Their invoice, your expense No NI, pension or holiday Keep contract + invoices Status risk stays yours Overseas supplier No UK PAYE to operate Reverse charge applies Their fees count towards your £90,000 VAT test
The same £1,500 a month, three completely different sets of obligations.

What employing someone actually costs in 2026/27

Creators tend to assume payroll is unaffordable. The arithmetic is friendlier than the reputation. Illustrative figures for a full-time editor on a £30,000 salary:

  • Employer National Insurance — £3,750. The employer rate is 15% on earnings above the secondary threshold of £5,000 a year. So (£30,000 − £5,000) × 15%.
  • Employment Allowance — up to £10,500. Eligible employers reduce their employer National Insurance bill by up to £10,500 for 2026/27, which wipes out the £3,750 entirely. The catch worth knowing: a company with only one director cannot claim if that director is the only employee liable for secondary National Insurance. Hire a second person and you are back in.
  • Workplace pension — £712.80. Automatic enrolment applies to staff aged 22 to State Pension age earning at least £10,000 a year. The minimum total contribution is 8%, of which at least 3% comes from you, calculated on qualifying earnings between £6,240 and £50,270. On £30,000 that is (£30,000 − £6,240) × 3%.
  • Paid holiday — 5.6 weeks. Already inside the salary, but it means roughly 28 days a year when the edits are not getting done. Budget content around it.

Total cost to you: £30,712.80, or £34,462.80 if you are not eligible for the Employment Allowance. Income tax and the employee's own 8% National Insurance come out of the £30,000 — they are not an extra cost to you, but you are the one who has to deduct and pay them over.

Compare that with paying a genuine freelancer £30,000 across the year: £30,000, deductible in full, no NI, no pension, no holiday, no payroll filings. The gap is under £1,000 once the Employment Allowance does its work — which is why the decision should be driven by how you actually want to work with the person, not by a tax saving that turns out to be rounding.

Two things creators get wrong on the mechanics

You do not need a limited company to employ someone. Sole traders run payroll all the time. Registering as an employer is a separate step from your business structure, and taking on staff is not by itself a reason to incorporate — see sole trader vs limited company for creators, where the honest answer at typical creator profits is closer to a wash than the internet suggests.

Register before the first payday, not after. You need your PAYE reference before you pay anyone, and you cannot register more than two months ahead. Someone starting on 1 September wants registering in July or August, not the week the first payment is due.

The overseas editor trap

Most creators' first hire is a freelance editor abroad. On the payroll side that is simple: someone who is not UK resident and does the work outside the UK is not on your PAYE scheme. They invoice, you pay, you claim it as a business expense like any other cost.

The trap is VAT, and almost nobody sees it coming. Buying services from an overseas supplier brings the reverse charge into play, and for a business that is not yet VAT registered, HMRC requires the value of those services to be added to your own taxable turnover when testing whether you have to register.

Put numbers on it. A creator turns over £78,000 of UK-taxable income — ad revenue, brand deals, the market value of gifted campaigns — and pays a Manila-based editor £1,200 a month, £14,400 a year. Their own income is £12,000 under the line. Add the editing fees and the test figure is £92,400: over the £90,000 threshold, with a registration obligation nobody in that story has noticed. Our creator VAT guide covers the rest of the threshold rules, and the VAT calculator gives you a first pass.

What to do this week

  1. Write down how the relationship really works — who sets the hours, whose equipment, how many other clients, what happens when they are ill. That paragraph is your status evidence.
  2. Get something in writing with every freelancer: scope, rate, who owns the footage and the finished edit. Copyright in an employee's work generally sits with the employer; with a freelancer it sits with them unless the contract says otherwise. For a channel built on a back catalogue, that is not a small detail.
  3. Keep every invoice and pay from your business account, so the cost lands in your books as a cost — see creator bookkeeping across platforms and the creator expenses guide.
  4. Add up your overseas suppliers for the last 12 months and put that number next to your turnover. Then look at the £90,000 line again.
  5. If it is really a job, make it a job. Register as an employer, run payroll, claim the Employment Allowance, and stop carrying a risk that grows every month it continues.

Hiring is the point where a channel becomes a business, and it is worth doing on purpose rather than by accident. We set up payroll, contracts and the VAT position for creators as a matter of routine — talk to us before the first payday, or see what it costs on the pricing page.