The invisible gap between

When I was first dating my husband-to-be, he worked underground. His mobile phone did not work there but when he had a break and went to the canteen it worked fine. If I needed to get hold of him during the day I would ask him “What time do you think your break will be tomorrow?”.

He would answer and I would call (if I could) at the duly appointed time. I did not do this daily, so it came as a surprise to me that after a while he got irritated when I asked this question.  It turned out that his break was at the same time every single day. He thought I was being lazy and not bothering to remember.  

Having been self-employed for decades, it simply never occurred to me that anyone had fixed routines. I work longer or shorter depending on what is going on.

He had always had a job. His job involved routine, meticulous attention to detail and forward planning over months and sometimes years.  He knew a year in advance when his tea breaks and lunch breaks would be. He knew exactly what time he was starting work (he was always punctual) and what time he was finishing work.

When he asked me “What time will you finish work tonight” I would give him an answer based on what I expected at the time.  As often as not a client would catch me on the phone 5 minutes before I was due to leave, and the phone call would make me late.  

I was viewed as hopelessly unpunctual. He suggested I tell the client work was finished and to call back another day. 

The world of having a job is a long way from the world of self-employment. He had a steady income – come what may whereas if I told a client call back later they might go somewhere else – so I rarely turned a last-minute phone call away. 

It has taken years, but we both see the gap now between our expectations about the world of work. We agreed that instead of giving him a fixed time I would say 6ish or 7ish. That way I could not be late!

When it came to renting our first flat together we had another little moment of incomprehension. He asked me tactfully – “What do you earn?”  He was trying to put together a household budget to work out what we could afford to rent.  I told him “I don’t know but I can tell you what I spend”.  

Again, a moment of culture clash.  I don’t know what I am going to earn this month, (it depends who actually pays me) or what my annual income is until I have finished the year and the end-of-year accounting is done (often months afterwards). He knew his pay rates, his overtime rates and could calculate his gross and nett income months in advance.

This gap in understanding feeds into how we think about what is fair for income and for tax.  I earned virtually nothing for the first five years of my business, but could not carry forward the unused personal tax allowances. So when I finally had a good year, I was an instant higher rate taxpayer (temporarily as it turned out!).   

We are encouraged to see contractors and small businesses as some kind of tax dodgers or part of the black economy.  Some may be. But the majority pay way more tax than global corporate or a billionaire offshoring their assets. My husband tells me he used to see all bosses as fat cats, but now he sees what really goes on he realises he had no idea.

Small businesses are regulated by people who have never run a small business and the gap between my husband's idea of how things work is tiny compared to the gap between HMRC’s or the government’s idea.   And if we are working for larger corporate clients, the people making decisions about when to pay us, how to use us, how to tax us have no idea of how their decisions affect our day-to-day.   The latest IR35 changes are a disaster waiting to happen and it seems no-one in charge can see how it affects the small business world.

We could do better if we started to measure the ‘ish’ of things and realise that some of us flex and bend to make things work and some of us are being pushed and flexed to the point of breaking but strange regulatory environments.   One size definitely does not fit all and if we don’t recognise this the next generation of entrepreneurs will be struggling to get from start-up to employing people.