I tried the self employment route a few years back, and am now firmly back in the payee scheme through normal employment. The problem I found in my line of work as a contract engineer, was that I felt I had to work every possible hour to keep the hourly income rolling over the length of the contract. That left me both knackered and no time to setup a follow up contract for when the current one ended.
Essentially it was very much a feast/famine sort of situation, one week earning large amounts and the next earning nothing. I also found the self assessment a pain in the rear, for 3 years after I ceased trading I got issued a self assessment form, and basically if you are issued one you MUST fill it in and return it, which was a pain in its self. In fact I am still paying 2 lots of national insurance contributions (through payee and also through installments from my self employed days) despite trying to sort it out with the NI people on multiple occasions.
So for me when a decent role came up offering a decent wage on the good old payee system, I jumped at it.
That said I have recently done some short contracting work using an umbrella company to sort the tax issues and although the take home was significantly less than if I did it fully self employed it was painless.
