Should a client deduct National Insurance from my Voiceover?

Running a voiceover business is stressful enough on a day-to-day basis and then sometimes you get a completely random phone call to raise those stress levels.

We'll leave the name of the TV company out of the picture, but some girl - and I use the word girl deliberately - rang us up asking for the National Insurance number of one of our voiceover artists who had recently completed a job for them.

We don't keep this sort of information on file as we don’t need it. But she really didn’t like it when I said that neither do we hold such information - and even if we did we would not pass it on.

The caller then said that they had to deduct national insurance from a payment which was due to us. Fortunately she wasn’t really on the ball as the invoice had already been settled in full. A few minutes later I received this email which had been sent to all her colleagues:

Hi


I have just spoken to Ricky Salmon at Big Fish Ltd. I asked him for an NI number as we have to deduct NI from all our voices. He was very rude and unhelpful and seems to think he knows more about what we pay and do not pay to the Government than we do. Unfortunately we have already paid the invoice in question and he said he was not prepared to divulge that information. I have informed him that if we do not have NI numbers no invoices will be paid to him in the future. I suggest we give this company a wide birth and do not use artists booked under them.

My reply:

I simply said that I do not have that information and even if I did have it I wouldn’t divulge it as you do not need it.


You should not deduct NI when paying another Limited Company as a Limited Company does not pay NI, individuals do.


I have already had this discussion with another company who finally agreed that they were misinterpreting the law and refunded the NI. Therefore I will not give out this information as without it you cannot deduct NI. I am acting on information given to me by my accountant.

After a worrying night - thinking that I had over-reacted and maybe waited a day or so before sending my reply, the following day I received this email from someone older and wiser:

One of my programme managers has made me aware of correspondence between you and our accounts department which took place yesterday. I’m in agreement with you re the NI deductions but that isn’t the reason I’m contacting you directly. I’m basically concerned that a member of accounts could send a circular advising us not to use your services when it’s actually an editorial decision as opposed to accounts having a personal issue.

Phew. Although an apology would have been nice. Although the line "he seems to think he knows more about what we pay and do not pay to the Government than we do" still rankles. Even if just running a voiceover agency, I actually do.