Member

It is a bit difficult to make sense of the HMRC figures. They add up to a little over 2 million employers paying secondary national insurance contributions. The most recent ONS survey data, from January last year, shows that the total business population includes 5.5 million businesses, of which 4.1 million are sole traders —or at least they have no employees, so we presume that they are sole traders. That leaves only 1.4 million businesses with employees, rather than the 2 million in the HMRC analysis.