Freelancers - The Dreaded T&C's ?

[stories]

The short answer is; none of your business.

 

The longer answer is; the relationships between me and my clients took the general form of a sub-contractor to a client or major contractor with the personally negotiated terms and conditions that are none of your business. Every relationship was different, all T & C's were different and even for the same client and performing the same service could result in widely varying returns.

 

You may well be performing a similar function to other self-employed contractors but you aren't doing the same job. Employed people have jobs, you run a business. Mind your business.

 

Not being nasty here, I just hate the term freelance which is far too often code in our game for "tax dodger."

 

 

Thanks for the reply Kerry, no offence taken and kinda glad it's not just me that hates the term 'freelancer' (as it's used currently in the AV / Events world)

 

I would however think a businesses standard T&C are fairly public domain as they would be provide to any potential client enquiring about engaging services, I'm not talking about detailed contractual terms you may then go and negotiate with a specific clients and asking in an open forum makes more sense to me than going off and soliciting quotes from people for fictitious jobs and asking what their T&C's are, no?

 

 

I'm totally with you on the the 'Freelancer', that's kind of why I have the hump and asked questions in the first place, my feeling is that more often than not, AV companies compleatly abuse the 'freelancer', treating them as an employee when it benefits them and sub-contractor when it benefits them, giving little care to the nature of the relationship or what benefits the 'freelancer', more often than not, resulting in what I see as disguised employment, rather than engaging a business supplying services.

 

But there seems to be a lot of 'freelancers' that are happy to keep the status quo and put up with the way they are treated ad move on to the next job. It's certainly a fine line knowing when to stand up for ones self and when to shut-up to earn a crust.

 

 

I guess I am more curious if any 'freelancers' actually have/send out T&C or just accept jobs and take whatever. My experience is that traditionally clients either told you what they wanted to pay and you said yes or no, or they used to ask your rate and that was about it, with all the IR35/tax stuff fairly recently (been at this 15 - 20 years), the larger companies (that do generally use 'Freelancers' as a dynamic workforce of workers, rather than genuine sub-contractors providing a service) that would make a better target for the tax man, seem to have started trying to cover there backs with t&c document etc that tell you your a sub-contractor, but they in the next breath set the terms that sound like an employee and of-course completely miss the real point.....

 

 

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