At the moment, gig workers and people with side hustles pay tax on earnings through self assessment, but research by HMRC back in 2019 and only just published revealed that the tax authority wanted to gauge taxpayer reaction to a significant change to their tax collection by taking the tax at source.

The overwhelming number of respondents to HMRC qualitative research on the impact of income tax reporting and payment in the ‘online sharing and gig economy’ wanted autonomy when dealing with their tax returns.

Those against the plans were concerned about how their income would be affected if HMRC were to deduct any income tax at source as they ‘felt that relying on the platforms or HMRC could potentially lead to error’, showing their lack of trust.

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