Re: Avoidance of responsibility
"If she was working in IT then IR35 rules would insist that she was an employee of Serco and the umbrella was irrelevant"
IR35 is not specific to IT workers, and, as far as I'm aware, working through an umbrella company (being under a contract of service and PAYE employee of it) renders IR35 irrelevant.
IR35 is only relevant where a contractor claims to be not under a PAYE contract of service to the recipient of the service or an independent intermediary. What HMRC appears to disapprove of is the concept a limited company acting as the intermediary where its director provides the service personally, as opposed to employing other to provide it.
The original (and reasonable) argument about "deemed employment" based on similarity of duties and obligations to those of an employee has been expanded until that original concept has been lost in the mush that now encompasses almost any independent contracting on almost any basis. This is because the interpretation of status does not depend on any actual contract, but is decided exclusively by the recipient of the service and HMRC, both of which have vested interests. That's fundamentally what makes IR35 utterly unfair - it totally disempowers one party to the contract.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
