How important are tech and other contractors to UK? PM candidate promises tax review if elected The leading candidate to replace Boris Johnson as the UK's prime minister has said she would review changes to the IR35 tax rules so often criticized by IT contractors. Liz Truss, who is currently foreign secretary and down to the last two in the race to be the ruling Conservative Party's leader, gave an interview over the …
The amount of bullshit emanating from both herself and Sunak has gotten to such dangerous levels, their own party have had to vote in favour to dump raw sewage in to the sea for fear of drowning in it themselves.
Honestly, there will be about as much movement on this than I will have after eating a family pack of Imodium.
If I've learnt one thing following the Tory leadership process, Truss will overnight turn around the economy, put Johnny European in his place and do away with evil. She quite literally shits gold.
So give it a few weeks and we can all put our feet up and relax. It's going to be plain sailing folks, mark my words.
You're not wrong there. Unfortunately, Labour will have to suckle up to the mainstream media (of which the vast majority have a right-leaning slant, and the rest are either already in Labour's corner or are owned by Russian emigrés) in order to do what they need to. Blair did that, and look what he was described as by 'old Labour' (i.e. the trade unionists and the extreme left-wing).
None of the politicians and none of their supporters understand (or care to understand) that most people just want their lives to move along smoothly, and that usually lies around the middle of the landscape, maybe for some a little right and some a little left of the center. But, thanks to the systematic (and systemic) poisoning of the minds of those in the middle by said mainstream media (mostly those on the cheap-buy-a-paper-for-35p end), things are becoming so utterly polarised that at some point there'll be blood.
Yes, don't flatter or fool yourselves. Truss is not going to order the review. And when people do ask her about it, she'll waffle on about other things of higher priority.
And if, and hell will freeze over, she *does* order the review, it and its results will just wither and die and dot in the archives like so many others people have done over the years.
They want to be *seen* to do something, not *actually* do something. Right now anything is done to play to the gallery to get votes. There's no substance to any of it.
"You don't get paid holidays, you didn't get those benefits."
The IR35 reforms were bonkers because the rules about what was "inside" and "outside" were (deliberately) poorly written to the point of even HMRC being unable to consistently determine a given contract's tax status. They patently are not about the level of "benefits" associated with freelance contract work as compared to a permanent employee. The contract is with the limited company, not with the individual who happens to own that limited company and happens to deliver the bulk of the services.
If that limited company chooses to make no provision for staff sickness or holidays that is very much their problem, not the tax system's. There's also the significant risk of arrangements that seem sensible for an effective sole trader very rapidly being abused by large scale services companies. This has happened a lot with cleaning companies, for example.
People in those circumstances may also not want the government to engage in too close a review of how things are setup, because particularly given recent High Court and Tribunal rulings they may well find themselves compelled to provide sick pay and holiday pay regardless of IR35 status. I doubt anyone wants that.
If that limited company chooses to make no provision for staff sickness or holidays that is very much their problem, not the tax system's.
You are missing the point here. When the company is being taxed on revenue, they have no room to make these provisions. The IR35 changes took that away.
Small one man band company does not do anything different than say Infosys, but the difference is the small business is taxed on revenue and Infosys is not.
The company is only "taxed on revenue" if it is found to be engaged in tax avoidance by masking employment. Otherwise you're taxed on profits like every other limited company.
The fix to your problem is to make it clear what is and what is not employment so we can all contract with confidence, not to make the system easier to abuse by formalising the ability to entirely forgo sickness and holiday provision by setting up a services company and then rewarding people for that otherwise undesirable misbehaviour.
The spike in contracts falling foul of IR35 is because the contracting organisations are risk averse, the burden of enforcement was shifted to them and the rules they're asked to enforce are clear as mud. The rules didn't fundamentally change. The enforcement did. We fix that by making the rules clear to minimise the risk.
The company is only "taxed on revenue" if it is found to be engaged in tax avoidance by masking employment. Otherwise you're taxed on profits like every other limited company.
Except this is not true. The penalty and liability for getting the status determination wrong only exists if the client declares relationship to be out of scope. This means the risk averse businesses only offer in scope contracts, regardless whether they deal with genuine small business or a "disguised employee".
The fix to your problem is to make it clear what is and what is not employment so we can all contract with confidence, not to make the system easier to abuse by formalising the ability to entirely forgo sickness and holiday provision by setting up a services company and then rewarding people for that otherwise undesirable misbehaviour.
I don't think you understand why people decide to start their own business, take the risk and work on their own account.
That being said, enacting such legislation without establishing clear rules, that has an effect of decimating small business that is making a competition for corporations strongly lobbying the government, makes me think tackling the imaginary "disguised employment" wasn't the real goal of these changes.
>Except this is not true. The penalty and liability for getting the status determination wrong only exists if the client declares relationship to be out of scope. This means the risk averse businesses only offer in scope contracts...
Sorry but this simply isn't true. There is liability for getting determination wrong in either direction. Central government are facing a bill of at least £263M for doing exactly this. Applying a blanket ruling of pulling everything "inside" IR35 is equally liable to enforcement as you would blanket declaring everything "outside". The end result is fewer freelance contracts and a less flexible market, not a blanket ruling one way or the other.
You can see the evidence for this in this very publication a couple of months back: https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/26/mps_slam_ir35_government_rollout/
You don't fix the IR35 reform by further butchering tax law to carve out more exemptions for us based on the fantasy ideas that we take more risk or receive fewer benefits. You fix the IR35 reforms by rewriting the rules to be clear, establishing common contractual clauses and implementing a rapid review/appeals mechanism to give businesses the confidence that they're following the law so we can compete on price and quality, not who is willing to run the gauntlet of HMRC enforcement.
>I don't think you understand why people decide to start their own business
I do, as I've been freelance contracting in various guises for over a decade now. I want to compete on a level playing field. I don't want to be competing on price with someone who is quite happy to make no provision for holidays or sick pay in a race to the bottom to see who can work themselves to death first. Regulation exists to provide a minimum base standard, not encourage us to whittle away at the fabric of our workforce until nothing is left but cranking out 90-hour weeks for a fixed price.
But, again, how and how much we tax freelancers is a completely distinct issue from the IR35 enforcement reform. Don't confuse them like Mrs Truss is doing.
There is liability for getting determination wrong in either direction. Central government are facing a bill of at least £263M for doing exactly this. Applying a blanket ruling of pulling everything "inside" IR35 is equally liable to enforcement as you would blanket declaring everything "outside".
No, the liability exists only if client declares contract to be out of scope and HMRC thinks it should be in scope. Blanket ruling, otherwise called "role based" is permitted by HMRC. You can find it in HMRC official guidance.
There is a mechanism (which is pointless) where the service provider can challenge the wrong determination, but the client can simply walk away.
Also to have contract firmly in scope, the client only needs to fetter substitution clauses.
I do, as I've been freelance contracting in various guises for over a decade now. I want to compete on a level playing field. I don't want to be competing on price with someone who is quite happy to make no provision for holidays or sick pay in a race to the bottom to see who can work themselves to death first. Regulation exists to provide a minimum base standard, not encourage us to whittle away at the fabric of our workforce until nothing is left but cranking out 90-hour weeks for a fixed price
This is complete nonsense.
>You can find it in HMRC official guidance.
Sorry guv but you're making things up at this point. The actual HMRC guidance on this is could not be more clear.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/off-payroll-working-rules-communication-resources/know-the-facts-for-contractors-off-payroll-working-rules-ir35
>Clients cannot apply a blanket status assessment across all contractors
There's a huge difference between blanket assessments for all contracts and applying the same assessment to the same role under the same terms. One of those is prohibited, one of those is required and they're otherwise unrelated.
Whatever your understanding, the facts are the same. You don't fix the current mess of IR35 by loading in some sweeteners and racing to the bottom on working standards. You fix them by rewriting the rules so they actually work and by giving us enforcement mechanisms that work in a timely fashion so we can all stop fucking about with HMRC's whimsy and focus on winning and delivering contracts.
This is a perfect example of disingenuity of HMRC.
What determines the status is mostly whether the client can accept a substitute for the role and this is a business decision. If a client wants to avoid the risk they formulate a contract that will firmly put engagement in scope. Individual status determination is then just literally a check box ticking exercise that will pass the mark of reasonable care.
The service provider can't demand the client to accept a substitute and make other provisions that would make the engagement out of scope.
This entire process is just a window dressing.
You have a fundamental lack of understanding of IR35.
>What determines the status is mostly whether the client can accept a substitute for the role and this is a business decision.
If your client has made the business decision to not accept an alternative person for service delivery then they are directly contracting you, not your company. We have a name for that and that name is employment.
"If your client has made the business decision to not accept an alternative person for service delivery then they are directly contracting you, not your company. We have a name for that and that name is employment"
Demonstrating you are subject to control and lack a right of substitution doesn't confer the obligations and protections inherent in an "employment" contract of service.
Fundamentally a contract for services at a given compensation, is intended to obtain a benefit from the services, not engage a employee in perpetuity.
IR35 is shit because it ignores reality, and penalises bootstrapping companies single handed.
Excellent so all those MP's being hired as board members must pay full employment tax on 100% of their fee, along with sportsmen and celebrities?
Its not like David Bangham (if they like pigs) Or Gary the Crisp can just send a substitute? Maybe Hessy will send Mike Lynch or Camamoron will be sending Dominic Cummings?
The reality is few clients will accept a substitute when the rubber meets the road. I have done it but it is hard work.
Client willing to accept a substitute is not a get out of jail card.
There are many rules around that. For instance - if it was possible for the client to hire the substitute directly (which is almost always possible - a matter of money) - then the substitution does not count.
It will also likely not count if you have not already used the substitute with that client. The substitute also must have not worked with the client before.
Then HMRC looks whether use of substitute is practical - for instance if the replacement would have to spend considerable amount of time to get up to speed.
Substitute also won't count if for instance you write the code and then send someone to present it. Substitute must be doing exactly the same job as yourself.
Ultimately the HMRC can always say that willingness to accept a substitute is to make the contract out of scope.
The system is basically set up to ensure the only "right" way is to have determination in scope.
Then they would become sole traders?.
If so you pay £6 a week NI and a claim third of your household bills against your tax.If your revenue falls the government sends you money!
Oh sorry the Tax man prevented that years ago when certain contractors left without paying tax.
We became limited companies because that was only route open not to avoid tax.
if it is found to be engaged in tax avoidance by masking employment
FFS, when people don't know the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion, how can they hope to have a clue about how any of it works?
Tax avoidance is perfectly legal, pretty much everyone does it
Tax evasion is illegal.
This is one of those bits of received-in-the-pub wisdom that is only half true, and not in a helpful way. Tax avoidance doesn't mean "reducing your tax bill" in general. It very specifically refers to novel or unusual practices designed to reduce the tax bill in ways not intended by Parliament, rather than taking advantage of tax breaks or incentives as designed. So on that front "pretty much everyone" doesn't do it. It's actually increasingly rare.
You can read the definition of and guidance around tax avoidance here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-avoidance-an-introduction
Off-payroll working as defined in IR35 is a form of tax avoidance.
The pig latin wisdom that "evasion is illegal and avoidance is legal" comes from the fact that tax evasion is a criminal offence, defined in statute. Avoidance is not a criminal offence, but can still be unlawful. It's dealt with through regulatory enforcement rather than criminal penalties so that nuance is lost on most people, but it's still a serious matter if the ol' revenue decide to open your books and issue you an SRN.
Easy fix would be to roll back an awful lot of other changes since then too. When I started work, both employers and employees NI was so low that it wasn't really worth avoiding it. Tax rates were 30%.
All we've done, starting from John Major, but especially Gordon Brown is to shift the tax from income tax to NI. That's made avoiding NI worthwhile.
Problem now is that any attempt to shift it back will be resisted as a 'tax on the retired'.
Retirement is when you realise all that money you'd set aside for a pension has been taken by the various governments and squandered leaving you penniless. At that point, you start looking for jobs that'll keep you fed until the day you die.
Unless you're rich. If you're rich it's whenever you're tired of messing with industry, or politics or whatever and want to go spend your time on a beach of that private island you bought, ignoring the world and its troubles 'cause that's beneath you.
>Easy fix would be to roll back an awful lot of other changes since then too.
Arguably the best fix would be to just do away with NI altogether. It's an archaic, regressive bit of taxation with a huge amount of administrative overhead and its links to provision of state services have long since been broken. Nobody wants to do this because the headline rate of income tax would jump ten points (which is also exactly why the headline rate of NI, which nobody really understands, is so high - stealth taxes).
You'd have to unpick the entitlements around payment of jobseeker's and employment support allowance but those are all, also, deeply broken bits of the benefit system.
NI as originally set up bears the exact same characteristics of a Ponzi scheme:
- money put in by 'investors' (workers) isn't invested or saved through a specific account for them but put in a pool from which is paid out to previous 'investors' (pensioners)
- initial 'investors' get more out than they put in
- system is only sustainable if there is an ever-increasing amount of new 'investors'
- as soon as the pool of new 'investors' starts drying up, the whole thing comes crashing down
- current 'investors' have little hope of ever seeing much of their money back
And it's even worse because a Ponzi scheme is elective, while NI is mandatory. The other giant bollocks is pretending the NI rate is say 10% for employee and 10% for employer. It's a cost to the employer that otherwise would go to the employee, it's exactly the same as if the employee is paying 20%, just disguised to make their employer look better and the tax 'feel' lower than it really is.
All the tweaks to NI such as raising retirement age are sticking plasters over a gunshot wound.
The IR35 is fundamentally different now as the big corporation is in power to destroy your business by determining how your company is going to be taxed.
It is quite apparent in haulage business where small subcontractors were servicing routes where bigger haulage companies couldn't find employees for. Now they can destroy potential competition by saying either take the contract in scope or go home. Then clients don't want to deal with small companies directly anymore out of fear of being investigated by HMRC (even if they done everything by the book, having to commit a couple of years of their lives to a pointless court case with Damocles sword hanging over their head, is a very strong reason to stop doing business completely or only deal with work in-scope which removes the risk).
So companies are closing and people with aspirations are choosing to do something else as being an employee of haulage company is a dead end job, as oppose to having your own business and growing it.
It's similar with IT - it killed many start ups and removed route out of poverty where you could use your own hard work and skill.
on all their lucrative sinecures with bigcorps.
It's just an(other) example of the rules being rigged so that it's one for them and a million for you. And gawd help you if you make a mistake anywhere. Coz you don't get the benefit of the doubt our parasitic overlords give themselves.
Why ElReg keeps posting this false statement with every IR35 related article?
The reforms are part of the government's crackdown on so-called disguised employment, where workers behave as employees but avoid paying regular income tax and national income contributions by billing for their services through personal services companies (PSCs), which are taxed at lower corporate rates.
There is no such thing as being taxed at "lower corporate rates".
If the contractor decides to take the small salary + dividend route - which is advised by accountants as it requires the least amount of bureaucracy, as PAYE is not really designed for freelancing - then the tax output will be broadly similar to PAYE (since 2017).
What HMRC actually considers missing is equivalent of Employer's NI in that case, but since the engagement is not of employment nature, you may argue whether this is justified - regardless, that's not an employee tax, so the argument you make is not valid.
This could have been easily fixed by a levy on dividend for small business, but it wouldn't look good from PR perspective (government is hammering small business with extra taxes while big corporations pay nothing!) - it's better to paint small businesses as tax dodgers.
"taxed at corporate rates which means overall the amount paid to HMRC is effectively less than if taxed as employee income"
That is correct, and it is also on purpose. The reason corporate tax rates are less than earned income tax rates is to encourage entrepreneurship. But as many have pointed out, IR35 is destroying small entrepreneurs to the benefit of big corporations.
This is not something that will help contractors. The main disadvantage of the current rules is that the risk sits with the client, not the contractor as it used to. This means that previously companies could pay someone a rate and offer a contract that suggested outside IR35 but then if HMRC disagreed it was the contractor on the hook. Now the client is on the hook if they haven't done the assessment correctly. Their only way to mitigate this risk is to move away from PSCs and go umbrella but that has proven to be expensive - I don't pay more tax in an umbrella, the client does because my rate went up to reflect their choice so I take home the same amount each month.
Gov.uk has already started to erode this a bit by discretely changing the rules so the risk can be shoved back onto the contractor if it is found that they misled the client on the IR35 assessment. Any review will be a further erosion of the responsibility of the client as those risks are shifted back onto the contractor. As for how HMRC interprets things, they have proven to be a law unto themselves when it comes to how the rules are interpreted. I can imagine they would be happiest if the contractor paid taxes like an employee and had all the risk while the clients would like to pay rates that are more in line with permies.
The main disadvantage of the current rules is that the risk sits with the client, not the contractor as it used to.
This is only partially true. The risk is both with the contractor and the client. This is something HMRC avoids giving straight answers to, but if client is found to have inappropriately determined the status and required to pay the PAYE tax, they can claw that money back from the contractor. Usually it will be in the actual contract terms, so any liability is shifted back to the contractor. But the client still will lose money on the legal costs etc and will have to waste who knows how much time, depending how aggressively HMRC is going to pursue.
It's also not clear how the process of reconciliation would look like as the contractor business would have paid all appropriate taxes. Will their company get the Corporation Tax and any other taxes paid returned? Etc. There is so many things and edge cases that legislation does not cover you would think that this is not actually about tax, but to prevent people from starting their own businesses and making competition against big established consultancies that do essentially the same thing.
"But the fact is, if you're self-employed, you don't get the same benefits as being in a big company. You don't get paid holidays, you didn't get those benefits. So the tax system should reflect that more,"
What a peculiar notion. Teaching assistants get longer holidays than refuse collectors - should they be taxed more as a result? This sound suspiciously like the traditional Tory dog whistle of lower taxes for those who use private schools or private healthcare.
"IR35 is a reform unveiled in 1999 by the UK tax authorities..."
Not really. This was a punative tax regime brought in by Labour's Gordon Brown and his side-kick Dawn Primarolo in order to try and kill off self-employment and freelance working in the IT sector. Ironic that it is was under the existing Tory government that that task has now all but been completed.
Liz Truss to go over IR35 off payroll tax as ruling party voters gear up to pick their leader
If anyone believes Parliament harbours any potential leadership cluster within its political party memberships, I suggest psychiatric help/non-invasive mental health therapy sessions for the affliction ...... Advanced Critical Delusional Onset. Don’t you recognise a Parade of Puppets whenever you see them in the flesh and vying for the Harry Limelight?
And please, take care if one wishes to register an opinion on such a matter, for much more than you can/may imagine may/can be made from it, for both good and bad purposes.
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