Letter - Cabinet Office requirements to confirm the tax arrangements of temp contract

[gbonner]

This is standard for most central government contracts now (although passing your info onto HMRC is new). I send them the public sector pack I get from qdos following contract review, they seem happy to accept this.
In your situation I would either ignore it or send a response saying that you are no longer engaged with the MoD.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

But this is pretty difficult and most of us will be medium pushing high risk. I went over the questions and I only managed 11 with 10 being high risk.

This. The way I work is pretty firmly outside of IR35, have a largely unfettered RoS, decent clauses to support the MOO argument and no D&C issues. I have no worries should I ever have an enquiry, but I seem to remember getting a high medium result on the BETs. They are rubbish.

I'm not sure they can compel OP to respond to the letter but it does seem like a very thinly veiled thread...respond or we'll set HMRC on you.

If OP does not have a PCG membership then they should sign up and get on to their advice helpline.

Glad I haven't done any public sector work (I nearly did some work for gov.uk once but didn't pursue it).

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

I have an unfettered right of substitution, no mutuality of obligation and absolutely no direction and control exercised by the client. I work from my own premises, using my own equipment. I work the days and hours that I want to - if I am unavailable, I tell the client that I am not available. I have PCG+ membership and TLC35 insurance just in case.

I scored 10 points, putting me in the high risk category

Hah, almost identical to me then.

Out of interest, I just ran through them again to see where I was losing out points.

* I mostly work from my own home office; about 80% of the time. But I don't get any points for this as I'm not renting dedicated business premises.
* Efficiency fail - I don't take on fixed price contracts as a rule as I'm not a fan of them for software development. I work on a time/materials basis and charge a daily rate. No points for me.
* No advertising - most of my leads come via my website (I have very good Google ranking) and word of mouth. I don't need to spend over £1200 a year advertising myself.
* Client risk test - all of my clients have been good payers so no points for me.

Score: 11 - medium risk.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Great isn't it. What is the one point you dropped? The business plan one?

I got that point! I don't have a written business plan but I do have a cash-flow forecast and a spreadsheet for tracking leads. Seemed good enough to me.

[CloudWalker]

no wonder no one wants to take government contracts any more
If you do its better to use a Brolly than a Ltd

[darrylmg]

Hah, almost identical to me then.

Out of interest, I just ran through them again to see where I was losing out points.

* I mostly work from my own home office; about 80% of the time. But I don't get any points for this as I'm not renting dedicated business premises.
* Efficiency fail - I don't take on fixed price contracts as a rule as I'm not a fan of them for software development. I work on a time/materials basis and charge a daily rate. No points for me.
* No advertising - most of my leads come via my website (I have very good Google ranking) and word of mouth. I don't need to spend over £1200 a year advertising myself.
* Client risk test - all of my clients have been good payers so no points for me.

Score: 11 - medium risk.

Surely your website *is* advertising.

[DaveB]

Surely your website *is* advertising.

It is, but the requirement is to show that you spent at least £1200 a year on advertising.

I had the same issue a while back, as did most public sector contractors, and went through QDOS for their contract review and report service. They provided a written review that indicated that contract was outside IR35 that was accepted by cabinet office themselves as it was for most of the rest of the contractors on the team.

There is a thread on it lurking around somewhere.

Edit : Here it is. Covers a lot of the crap around the new CL1 framework contracts as well.

http://forums.contractoruk.com/busin...ntracting.html

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Surely your website *is* advertising.

Yes, but it only costs me about £360 a year in hosting fees. Not the arbitrary £1200 HMRC have come up with.

[TheFaQQer]

Hah, almost identical to me then.

Out of interest, I just ran through them again to see where I was losing out points.

* I mostly work from my own home office; about 80% of the time. But I don't get any points for this as I'm not renting dedicated business premises.
* Efficiency fail - I don't take on fixed price contracts as a rule as I'm not a fan of them for software development. I work on a time/materials basis and charge a daily rate. No points for me.
* No advertising - most of my leads come via my website (I have very good Google ranking) and word of mouth. I don't need to spend over £1200 a year advertising myself.
* Client risk test - all of my clients have been good payers so no points for me.

Score: 11 - medium risk.

That's me - this contract has paid late three times, but since I got the money eventually that doesn't count as far as HMRC's tests are concerned.

This contract and the one before were 100% work from home, but since I save money by working from a dedicated floor in my house rather than somewhere that I pay for, it counts for nothing.

I still say bring it, though.

[cojak]

no wonder no one wants to take government contracts any more
If you do its better to use a Brolly than a Ltd

I would instruct my accountant that I'm PAYE for the duration of the contract.

But I'd only take that contract if there was nothing else on the table and I'd been benched for 6 months (which was the last time I took an NHS contract, quite some time ago).