confused student

[lau]

For the past couple of months a photographer has been paying me on an hourly basis (usually about 3 days a week) to provide services eg photography and retouching. He has advised me to register as self employed and I invoice him regularly for my hours - I can provide as many hours as I would like, which suits me becauseI am a full time student in photography until my course is completed in September.
I do not recieve any of the benefits of being employed and he will not recognise me as an employee. I am in the process of registering myself as self employed, which I think will be handy for the future as I anticipate taking on private work after September aswell as working for this photographer.
However, am I likely to come across problems when it comes to paying tax as a self employed person because he pays me on an hourly rate and I use his premises/equipment etc? Is there any way of getting around this?
Currently what he pays me is my only source of income.

I'm very aware I do not have much time to make this decision because of the three month deadline that looms.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[CDavey9501@aol.com]

From a tax point of view you should register as self-employed. There is a (very) small possibility that the Inspector may at a later date argue that your income should have been treated as income from employment. However it is mainly your client's responsibility for getting the employment status classification right.

[lau]

Thanks, I will do, and hopefully I wont have any real problems. It is amazing how much conflicting advice you recieve when starting out!

Some of this advice has been about whether I should be considered 'freelance' or not. Is there a minimum amount of clients that a freelancer needs to work for over a certain period? Someone suggested four a year but I couldn't find this anywhere official.