Working with freelancers

This article is about working with Self-Employed Persons Without Personnel, or zzp-ers. Working with self-employed people differs in many areas from working with employed people. You are much freer in the arrangements you make with them. There is a different working relationship and relationship of authority. In general, you will supervise employees more intensively and you are responsible for the entire process, whereas with self-employed people you can often delegate some of the responsibility. With self-employed people you can make agreements about how something should look and when it has to be finished. That person can then decide for himself how he gets it done, whether he does it himself or hires someone else to do it, whether he works at night or during the day, etc. This is all up to the person, as long as he or she fulfills the agreements.

General conditions

In addition to making agreements about money, the service provided and deadlines, there are a lot of things you would rather not have to agree on every time. For example, think about copyright, liability, non-competition clause, payment terms, expense reimbursement and expenses and the like. There are general terms and conditions for that. This is a list of conditions that apply to every agreement. Discuss these terms where necessary before you give someone an assignment. Basically, if you don't confirm anything, the rule applies that the terms and conditions of the offering party (the party making the offer usually) are valid.

Wet DBA / Model agreement

You must at all times be able to make it clear to the IRS that you are entering into an agreement with a zzpp'er as principal and contractor and therefore not as employer and employee. There are some crucial differences in this compared to employment. One important difference, for example, is the control over how one may arrange the work and how one accounts for it. That has to do with the relationship of authority. You must be able to make these differences clear, otherwise the tax authorities will see it as disguised employment and you will have to pay pay income tax in addition to the agreed amount. That's quite a setback if it comes to that. So make sure you can make this clear. Increasingly, the zzp-er draws up a model agreement (or you do this together). As part of the changing Deregulation of Labor Relations Act (Wet DBA), this will increasingly become mandatory in the coming period. If zzp-ers doubt whether they are operating independently enough, they can do the entrepreneur check from the tax authorities.

Administration

For the administration, it is nice to have a number of things ready, besides the invoices of course, if you are going to work with freelancers. Think for example of the order confirmation, a quotation, the most important data, a copy of the identity document (pay close attention to privacy under the AVG) and an emergency telephone number (ICE number).

Checklist

In addition to the above topics, we'd like to give you a few more (perhaps less obvious) points that are good to think about before you get started.

• How much of the agreed amount do you pay up front, and how much only after the job is completed?
• Where is the liability if something goes wrong? How are you and how is the self-employed person insured? Many companies require the self-employed workers they work with to have third-party insurance.
• How do you handle the non-compete clause? For example, what would you do if the zzp'er approaches your client directly?
• Does the self-employed person work with their own equipment or prefer to work with the client's equipment?
• Where is the copyright on the products developed within the assignment?

If, from your expertise, you yourself have knowledge that would fit this topic, or if you see opportunities to improve this text, we look forward to receiving your message at info@cultuuracademy.nl.