provided that evidence of some other kind (a witness to the agreement, for example) can be relied on.

When you engage an individual to work on your production, however short or long the engagement may be, you must be sure whether the contract is one "for services" (ie self-employment) or "of service" (ie employment). This is not a matter of discretion: income tax and social security legislation, cases decided by the courts under that legislation, and interpretation of that legislation by the Inland Revenue and the Department of Social Security, all combine to tell you what type of contract it must be. One of the icons at the end of this page will take you to the Inland Revenue guidance for independent producers

on this question, as it relates to freelance production people and crew.

As a producer, you or the company you are working for have different responsibilities to the people you engage according to whether they are employed or self-employed. On a practical level, you are obliged to get a P45 tax/national insurance form from a new employee, and deduct tax and national insurance contributions at source from his/her wages (with the minor exceptions specified in the Inland Revenue guidance referred to in the previous paragraph), and you must make employersâ National Insurance contributions. You must pass the relevant amounts of tax and NI contributions on to the Inland Revenue, with all the prescribed returns. Whereas, with