... by grouping employees together, BAE did not show what HMRC calls "reasonable care." A draft manual to be released by HMRC when the legislation goes live in April states that applying the tool to "a large group of workers who have some variation between the work that is being carried out" is a big no-no ...
So ... reading between the lines ... HMRC have suddenly realized that it's too expensive for them to look in detail into the individual circumstances of everyone operating a PSC, and they've decided to pass that cost onto the clients of the PSCs.
The clients are not supposed to apply the rules with such a broad brush, but it's cheaper and easier for them to do so, so (at least as a first response) that's what they're doing.
Methinks we have to wait for a few test cases in which the big users of contractors get rapped across the knuckles for applying such a broad brush, and we'll be back to something like where we were before.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
