"No its legal, its just legal tax avoidance."
No, at least 90% of what you've listed is fraud. Done may be difficult to prove, but that doesn't make it legal. If I drive at 120mph on a public road with no cops or cameras, that would be illegal whether anyone could prove it or not.
"they literally are the same job - I'm not just the FTE remember, I'm the guy doing the hiring"
If you are getting contractors in to do exactly the same job as an FTE, with exactly the same working practices and conditions, then those contractors should be employees. That doesn't mean we all are, though, and it sounds more like dodgy recruitment practices on your part than the contractors.
"And yet not so when an FTEs spouse does the same."
If you need stationery for work purposes as an FTE, your employer should be providing it. It shouldn't be up to your wife to go to the shops and buy it for them.
"Reducing the tax bill may be the primary driver but it can't be proven."
Just because something cannot be proven didn't make it legal, see above. Even so, I think the majority could be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
"If you can't run your business without the massive tax subsidy it has enjoyed up to this part then it is a business that society will not miss"
It's not about a massive tax subsidy, it's about being able to run as a business. There are very few businesses which would survive if they had to have PAYE tax paid as if salary to the owner on all sales, without a thought to the expenses required to make those sales.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
