13 April 2023 
Julia Ascott, Employment Taxes Specialist
National Institute of Health and Care Research, Health and Care Research Wales and the Health Research Authority (collectively referred to as NIHR within this article) published guidance last year on the potential tax difficulties taking on research participants or volunteers. The guidance was initially billed as a ‘work in progress’ whilst they tested how users were able to apply the guidance in practice. Following the feedback gained from the initial publication, the new and improved guidance on payments has been published.
NIHR states, “Based on the feedback we have made a few important changes. We have:
No guidance is completely fool proof and example scenarios are never ‘one size fits all’. However, this guidance helps to promote employment status issues amongst researchers and research staff who are responsible for organising public involvement in research. More awareness can only help improve compliance.
