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Home / Simons-Taxes /Personal and employment tax /Part E4 Employment income /Division E4.2 Office or employment /Status of particular occupations based on case law or HMRC practice / E4.231 Status of barristers and barristers' clerks
Commentary

E4.231 Status of barristers and barristers' clerks

Personal and employment tax

Barristers

A practising barrister teaching part time at a university or law college is not an employee. However, a non-practising barrister's appointments as a part-time lecturer on legal subjects have been held to be employments, notwithstanding that those appointments constituted only one of three separate sources of income for the taxpayer. In Sidey v Phillips1, the taxpayer was paid on an hourly basis and there was minimal control over his work. In practice, the terms of his contracts were not strictly adhered to, and the discontinuous nature of the appointments meant that he could easily be dismissed. However, it was held that those factors were not inconsistent with a finding that the appointments were employments2.

Barristers' clerks

The legal position respecting barristers' remuneration derives from custom, and that of their clerks would seem to be similar in origin. There is, today, no practice applicable to all cases, but, in general, a mixture of the old fee system and the more modern method of payment by way

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