Contractors, run a free payslip audit to check your umbrella company is upstanding

Individual contractors working through an umbrella company, who want to understand if their pay and taxes are being dealt with correctly, can now request a free ‘payslip audit’ via our website, writes LITRG technical tax officer Meredith McCammond.

Who are unrepresented taxpayers?

It’s part of our educational charity this year trialling new ways of reaching “unrepresented” taxpayers – that’s taxpayers (including contractors) who don’t have an accountant. We want to help them better understand their tax obligations to HMRC.

Our additional aim is to gather insight and information directly from the unrepresented -- potentially including contractors -- about their experiences with the tax system.

Find LITRG on Money Saving Expert, TikTok…

So you can now find us answering queries on Money Saving Expert, setting up a TikTok channel (give us a follow before your kids do), and now this particular trial.

Out of all our activities in 2025, it’s this free payslip audit that will support our labour market work by giving us better insight into umbrella company workers and the issues they face.

The payslip audit will be carried out by special software developed by compliance firm SafeRec, which has kindly provided LITRG with access to its tech for free.

Keeping umbrella contractors informed goes beyond tech

It’s not just tech of course that we’re trying to leverage to keep umbrella company contractors better informed and protected.

We have put together a lot of information to help individuals understand umbrella companies. The info includes guidance on how to manually check whether your umbrella pay and taxes are being dealt with properly. But it’s 2025, so our hope is that by SafeRec software automating this checking process, a bigger chunk of workers will check their payslip to ensure it’s correct.

Using tech to understand your umbrella company payslip, including the deductions, is timely.

Umbrella companies' costs will increase from 2025-26

Over the coming tax year 2025-26 (commencing April 6th 2025), costs and obligations for employers including umbrella companies will increase as laid out under Autumn Budget 2024 and the Employment Rights Bill.

Contractors ought to be on guard, as measures stemming from those two could increase avoidance behaviour.

Umbrella regulation questions abound

There are other uncertainties too.

In fact, despite last week's government response to the umbrella company consultation, there are many questions about what impact umbrella regulation might have on the sector.

While welcome, insofar as it has the potential to protect workers, regulation remains more than a year away.

Giving umbrella contractors support, and a voice

And that brings me right back to the sense in you running a free payslip audit on brollies you use as a contractor. When you use the service, LITRG explains (before sign-up stage) that the results are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be considered in isolation.

Nonetheless, we hope that the results, along with guidance on our platform, help empower workers to understand their tax position and ask more questions. However, as mentioned at the top, this initiative will also support LITRG’s labour market work, helping us to explore and test new ways of gathering insight and information directly from taxpayers to better understand their issues and needs to ensure that we are really giving them a voice in our work.

In closing, a bit more transparency…

Please be aware that while individuals’ personal information will not be shared or used by LITRG, we will use anonymised data in furtherance of our work. For example, we may use it to look for trends and patterns in umbrella company practices.

A new explainer page where workers can read more about the brolly payslip audit service, and a portal where you can agree to some terms and conditions and upload your payslip and contractor reconciliation statement, can be found here. To check your umbrella is being upstanding, what are you waiting for?!