Freelance/Employee query

Hello,

Firstly I hope that I have put this in the correct section!

I have some problems that I am dealing with and trying to get my head around and on finding this website, looks like a good and helpful place to ask.

I should probably start with some background info. I am in my late 30s and work in digitisation (my age doesn’t matter too much but suffice to say I am not just out of Uni or starting on my career ladder!). I first got into this line of work when I started working in house for a small photographic archive about 10 years ago, that job was great, I learned a great deal about digitisation and my job was safe and I was on their books. Easy. Then sadly I was made redundant about 5 years ago. At that point I was happy to decide to give freelancing a go and I managed to pick up a few solo jobs but not much, then I found a company in London that started giving me good work, this lasted until one day when the manager there asked if I would like to come in to the office and cover someone’s holiday which I did, but from then on I found myself working full time for them although I was never taken on ‘officially’, I was still freelance.

Fast forward to now, about a year a go, I moved to another part of the company, well it’s a different company doing a different type of digitisation (moving image, not photography) but we get our work from the original company - if that makes sense but I am now being paid by the manager of this company.

Here the problems begin. I am still freelancing but he never pays me on time and when he does pay it’s never the full amount and I’m trying to get to the bottom of this with him, I know the situation I’m in and I know the difference between being an employee and freelance and obviously I should be on their books yet when I put this to him he said being PAYE would be too complicated for him, great, well being freelance is quite complicated for me too especially when my hourly rate is more in line with that of an employee and not a freelancer who pays his own tax and NI.

I feel that I’m ranting here and not asking the forum anything coherently (I’m quite stressed with it all at the moment!), what I’d really like to know is where do I stand legally?

Am I likely to get in trouble with HMRC if this is not rectified. It doesn’t look like he is going to take me on to his books any time soon or ever but I also know that the kind of work I do is quite niche and quite hard to come by elsewhere and I don’t really want to change career again because I really love what I do (it was my choice to move to the moving image digitisation as that is an area I am passionate about) but I really don’t want to feel like I’m being treated unfairly, I want to do a good job but I feel my work is suffering because I don't feel settled and yes I have told him all of this, I just don't think he understands or wants to understand the legal ramification of it all!

Thank you for you time,

Jonathan