I'm possibly going to be starting a new contract in the new year, via my limited company, as an IT project manager. I'll be managing a series of projects both concurrently and consecutively, initially for three months and possibly longer (if an extension is offered and accepted).
The question of whether or not I'll be inside IR35 is difficult for me to answer with confidence. I'll get the contract reviewed by someone like Qdos, but I'm aware that this is largely worthless without a review of working practices. Some of the working practices are currently unclear - for instance, whether I'm expected to ask for time off (rather than declare it), flexibility over working hours, use of staff canteen, etc. - and clearly the "real" practices may not be in step with the contract.
What's the standard approach here? Should I have raised this stuff in the interview? That seems a bit risky, as I suspect that in reality most interviewers won't be sufficiently familiar with IR35 to understand the problem and would assume that I'm going to be high maintenance. Or I could get the contract reviewed and then do the working practices questionnaire a few days into the contract, but if the answer is "sorry, you're inside IR35" it's a bit late to make major changes. It all seems a bit vague and messy to me: I would guess that the right answer is to establish fully the working practices before accepting the contract, but it's not clear to me how best to going about doing so when it doesn't appear to be a conversation that employers are accustomed to having.
On a related note, my "research" has given me the impression that the IT contractors I've worked with are in an IR35 grey area at best - payment is typically by the day rather than by the deliverable; there is little real financial risk to the contractor; work is generally assigned and not optional (beyond walking away from the contract); there is often only limited flexibility in working hours and location, and so on. I may be overly pessimistic here, and perhaps my experience of IT contracts and contractors is actually not typical at all, but I do wonder how many of us would be in trouble if HMRC were able to investigate everyone. Are we basically relying on safety in numbers, or have some of you nailed the art of negotiating compliant working practices as well as compliant contracts, or does the "typical" IT gig contain enough wiggle room in its working practices (lack of MOO, etc) that an organisation like PCG or Bauer & Cottrell can present a robust defence?
I didn't mean this to be an essay, sorry. My reading has thrown up a lot of stuff about what a contractor's working practices should and shouldn't look like, but not much about how this can be made to work in real life for IT people. Any thoughts, advice and so on would be very welcome.
The question of whether or not I'll be inside IR35 is difficult for me to answer with confidence. I'll get the contract reviewed by someone like Qdos, but I'm aware that this is largely worthless without a review of working practices. Some of the working practices are currently unclear - for instance, whether I'm expected to ask for time off (rather than declare it), flexibility over working hours, use of staff canteen, etc. - and clearly the "real" practices may not be in step with the contract.
What's the standard approach here? Should I have raised this stuff in the interview? That seems a bit risky, as I suspect that in reality most interviewers won't be sufficiently familiar with IR35 to understand the problem and would assume that I'm going to be high maintenance. Or I could get the contract reviewed and then do the working practices questionnaire a few days into the contract, but if the answer is "sorry, you're inside IR35" it's a bit late to make major changes. It all seems a bit vague and messy to me: I would guess that the right answer is to establish fully the working practices before accepting the contract, but it's not clear to me how best to going about doing so when it doesn't appear to be a conversation that employers are accustomed to having.
On a related note, my "research" has given me the impression that the IT contractors I've worked with are in an IR35 grey area at best - payment is typically by the day rather than by the deliverable; there is little real financial risk to the contractor; work is generally assigned and not optional (beyond walking away from the contract); there is often only limited flexibility in working hours and location, and so on. I may be overly pessimistic here, and perhaps my experience of IT contracts and contractors is actually not typical at all, but I do wonder how many of us would be in trouble if HMRC were able to investigate everyone. Are we basically relying on safety in numbers, or have some of you nailed the art of negotiating compliant working practices as well as compliant contracts, or does the "typical" IT gig contain enough wiggle room in its working practices (lack of MOO, etc) that an organisation like PCG or Bauer & Cottrell can present a robust defence?
I didn't mean this to be an essay, sorry. My reading has thrown up a lot of stuff about what a contractor's working practices should and shouldn't look like, but not much about how this can be made to work in real life for IT people. Any thoughts, advice and so on would be very welcome.
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