Oh yes, if you're in busines, I reckon the odds are you're breaking some bureacratic law somewhere and you don't even know it. I am feeling irritable about this tonight because it would appear that I need to review my business (which fortunately we're in the process of looking at anyway) regarding some inane bill that's been put through and now impacts upon it.
Now, we could ignore it. It's not like our government is particularly able at enforcing laws, but I'd rather stay squeaky clean. So I'll add that to the To do list.
Over the last year, we've had to make several major adaptions so as not to break the law. Here's an example:
Some of our tutors were international students. No problem, we thought. Good for them. Makes sense that you might want to tutor Mandarin and in doing so raise the nation's generally appalling levels of linguistic ability. But, international students apparently have horribly complex rules surrounding whether they are allowed to work on a self-employed basis. We're talking about £10 a week for an hour's tutoring. God forbid the taxman might lose out on that.
In light of said bureaucracy, we can't advertise in a number of desirable places for fear their students might get themselves in trouble. Leaving aside the fact that the other 90% of home students miss out on the opportunity because of said bureaucractic procedures and that their students are in fact, grown ups more than able to do adult things like pay them £3,000 a year or check their own visa, does this not strike you as ludicrous?
We even have a big button saying, "make sure you check your visa before registering." Tutoring is skilled work, great CV building stuff and stimulates the brain a lot more than working 4 hours a week in Tesco. But apparently stacking shelves doesn't break any rules in the knowledge economy.
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I wouldn't worry about it. Every single company I've worked for - and most of them have been *huge* - flagrantly disregard the law in some way or other. Except, so far, my current employer, but given my experience of large multinationals, I reckon it's just a matter of time until I stumble upon how they're breaking the law.
In your case, remember that you have to do something bad enough to get someone to press charges, which seems unlikely. I reckon you're probably OK getting your users to agree to terms & conditions which state 'I am legally allowed to do this and will sort my own taxes out'. It works for pr0n sites. If your T&C covers you, your tutors are liable... and who in their right mind would press charges against them? They might be technically breaking the letter of the law, but I doubt they violate the spirit of it. If the tax office come along saying how bad you are, then tell them how sorry you are and worry about changing your business model to suit the legislation as it stands whenever they decide to do so. You'll be in a much better position because you'll be big enough for the tax office to care by that point.
You might want to check out Paul Graham's essay on software patents. It's a different law in a different country but I think the same principle applies - nobody who could sue a small startup has much to gain by doing so.
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