Posts by deighton1966

HMRC's IR35 tweaks have 90% of UK's IT contractors up in arms

It now takes as little time for the Daily Mail to be referred to as it takes for someone to mention Hitler!

I think the point is that it's been decided that the public sector itself will determine whether or no a person it is paying to do work is doing so as an employee or not. Actually I think the difference between an employee and a company is a lot more than whether or not there is a paper company set up for the contractor to work under.

I've read the legal advice given to contractors, and it is pretty obvious they are exploiting a load of legal loopholes, the valid Ltd company you mention is in fact a paper entity setup to exploit loopholes in employment law and taxation.

There aren't any plans to illegally take money off people. If you are a genuine service provider not caught by IR35, then what are you worried about?

In terms of the criminal law, arresting and jailing people - as happened once with Nissan UK - no Amazon have seemingly not done that sort of wrong. What Amazon has done is perpetrated an ethical wrongdoing, possibly in conjunction with elected governments (and unelected ones like the EU) - and that is what they deserve to have publicised. Some people, at least for a time, boycotted some of these tax-dodging companies.

more complicated as in being unemployed do you mean? Why not look for a new job/contract in that instance?

Otherwise I agree, adverts and articles saying 'go contracting and make it exactly like being an employee' do make cynics like me think that IT contractors are in disguised employment - which I accept is not always the case. I've seen my company contract in expert IT knowledge, but I've also seen them but a bottom in the seat next to me to churn out bog standard .net code from a spec - it was hardly some sort of expert knowledge, it was maybe 18mths experience for a very average programmer. Anyway, if that wasn't disguised employment hiding behind a paper company, dunno what was.

yes it is so nice of them to work at a 20% discount below their market rate, which must be the case if they think they can hike prices by 20% overnight to pay tax they haven't been paying. If they can do that, then what on earth are they complaining about?