French employer

We have been contacted by a French company which is about to employ a salesman in the UK. It requires a UK payroll to be operated for the new employee. The employee is a normal UK resident individual and so is subject to UK income tax and National Insurance contributions.

My understanding was that where a business has no UK place of business it cannot be liable to secondary class 1 National Insurance contributions.

However when I checked the guidance it referred to the new EC regulation 883/2004 introduced in May 2010.

This means employers in EC countries are treated as having a place of business in the UK for National Insurance purposes.

Consequently an EU employer with no UK place of business will be subject to secondary contributions in respect of employees working in the UK.

Details on the application of these new regulations appear...