Tax Tribunal rules on employment status of football referees

The history of the employment status dispute between Professional Game Match Officials Ltd (PGMOL) and HMRC is a long and protracted one. PGMOL provides referees for football matches in England, and this case considered the employment status of Level 1 National Group football referees. HMRC’s contention is that these referees were employees of PGMOL and therefore PAYE should be operated on their earnings, whereas PGMOL asserted that they were self-employed.

The case previously went to the Supreme Court in 2024, who clarified how the three-stage employment status test was to be applied in cases such as these:

• There must be sufficient “mutuality of obligation”, broadly recognised as involving an obligation on an employee to provide a personal service in return for payment.
• There must be a sufficient “framework of control” under which the employer controls the employee’s personal service. It is not necessary for an employer to give direct instructions to employees, have a contractual right to direct every aspect of their service, or intervene during the performance of the service. What will constitute sufficient control will be fact-dependent and a combination of various factors, including contractual obligations and post-engagement sanctions, capable of creating a sufficient framework of control.
• Under an overall analysis, the entirety of the contract is consistent with it being an employment contract. This is the stage that the Supreme Court highlighted as being the most important in future cases, with the mutuality of obligation and framework of control tests to be considered in their factual context.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) for them to reconsider the overall analysis and to conclude whether the match referees were operating under contracts of employment

The FTT decision

Applying the approach set out by the Supreme Court, the FTT concluded that they were not. While a work/wage bargain existed for each match, the mutual obligations were narrow, episodic and permeated by choice. Referees could freely decline appointments, withdraw without sanction even after acceptance, and PGMOL had no obligation to offer work. These features were inconsistent with the stability and reciprocity characteristic of employment.

Although PGMOL exercised significant oversight through appointment systems, fitness requirements, assessment, coaching and disciplinary mechanisms, the Tribunal found that the nature and quality of control were regulatory, developmental and gatekeeping rather than managerial. Critically, referees retained complete autonomy over on‑field decision‑making, with disciplinary authority for performance resting with the Football Association, not PGMOL.

Integration and economic reality also pointed away from employment. Referees derived their professional status from the FA, not PGMOL; refereeing was a serious but secondary activity alongside full‑time employment and did not provide their livelihood. Standing back, the FTT held that the individual match engagements were contracts for services. The appeals were therefore allowed.

Moore Kingston Smith comment

Recent years have seen a great deal of interest in employment status cases, with high profile decisions looking at sportspeople, television celebrities, and other types of work where employment patterns are not always straightforward. It’s likely that there will be further appeals in this area, and while FTT decisions are not legally binding, this is an interesting look at how other tribunals may approach these cases in the future with the tribunal still willing to look at the arrangement in the round rather than the simplistic view that, where there are control factors in existence and mutual obligations exist, an employment relationship must exist.

It’s also currently unclear if HMRC will appeal this new FTT decision any further, but given the history of the litigation, it may be that HMRC does not pursue this particular case any further.

Regardless of the future of this particular case, employment status continues to be complex. Please do contact our employment tax specialists if you want to discuss the employment status for tax case or want to explore how we can assist with your employment tax concerns.