Technically, your legal employer is your umbrella payroll company as they are the ones responsible for deducting your tax and send this to HMRC on your behalf. This can seem confusing as there may be 3 different parties involved in your work. For example, if you are working as a Teaching Asssitant, these parties would be: 1. Your Recruitment Agency who sends you jobs to go on. 2. The school who you spend the day working at. 3 The Umbrella Payroll Company who ultimaltey pays you. So you can be forgiven for getting confused as to who your employer is from time to time. Once again, in this example above, your legal employer is your Umbrella Payroll company.