Withdrawl of BETs

[boxingbantz]

So, having read the headline I was emailed from CUK yesterday about BETs having been withdrawn and no other ways of determining your IR35 status, am I right in thinking (as stated) that as long as your contract is reviewed and confirmed IR35 friendly you can assume yourself to be being outside of the legislation and sleep a little easier at night?

Seems to good to be true.

Before the forumpolice (NLUK) comes steamrolling in, I have looked at other threads and used the search button...

[tractor]

....

So, having read the headline I was emailed from CUK yesterday about BETs having been withdrawn and no other ways of determining your IR35 status, am I right in thinking (as stated) that as long as your contract is reviewed and confirmed IR35 friendly you can assume yourself to be being outside of the legislation and sleep a little easier at night?

Seems to good to be true.

Before the forumpolice (NLUK) comes steamrolling in, I have looked at other threads and used the search button...

It is too good to be true.

You absolutely must ensure that your actual working practices render you outside. Arguably this is at least or even more important than the contract.

[malvolio]

So, having read the headline I was emailed from CUK yesterday about BETs having been withdrawn and no other ways of determining your IR35 status, am I right in thinking (as stated) that as long as your contract is reviewed and confirmed IR35 friendly you can assume yourself to be being outside of the legislation and sleep a little easier at night?

Seems to good to be true.

Before the forumpolice (NLUK) comes steamrolling in, I have looked at other threads and used the search button...

To be fair the BETs were not about your IR35 status, only about how open to a challenge you were. Not that they achieved that anyway.

That aside, the basis for an IR35 determination remains the same and has never changed: RoS, MOO and D&C as per established case law. However the only thing Dragonfly achieved (other than the wrong answer...) was that the working practices have to align to the contract. HMRC will look at them first, then the contract.

So the contract is important, but it absolutely has to match reality.

[TheFaQQer]

So, having read the headline I was emailed from CUK yesterday about BETs having been withdrawn and no other ways of determining your IR35 status, am I right in thinking (as stated) that as long as your contract is reviewed and confirmed IR35 friendly you can assume yourself to be being outside of the legislation and sleep a little easier at night?

No - you can assume that you might be able to show that you did some due diligence about the contract, and therefore HMRC can't claim you were deliberately avoiding tax.

If the contract reflects the reality, then you can sleep soundly. If it doesn't, then you shouldn't.

Of course membership of an organisation that will fight your investigation (and most cases that lose do so because they don't have professional help at the right time) will also help you sleep better.

[Project Monkey]

Nothing has changed as far as the legislation is concerned. The change only affect public sector clients who want you to disclose your IR35 staus and provide some evidence to substantiate your decision.

[northernladuk]

To be fair the BETs were not about your IR35 status, only about how open to a challenge you were. Not that they achieved that anyway.

I think you are being more than fair. BET never existed to determine status. They were never explained that way and there was plenty of explanation about what they were supposed to deliver. I have no idea how on earth anyone can come to the conclusion they are used to determine status. The output of them was high medium and low for a start. I do think anyone that confuses this is really struggling with understanding IR35 and it's application and could just be paying it lip service.

[malvolio]

I think you are being more than fair. BET never existed to determine status. They were never explained that way and there was plenty of explanation about what they were supposed to deliver. I have no idea how on earth anyone can come to the conclusion they are used to determine status. The output of them was high medium and low for a start. I do think anyone that confuses this is really struggling with understanding IR35 and it's application and could just be paying it lip service.

The idea of the original BETs, as proposed by the IR35 Forum and pretty much universally agreed, was to lay out a set of conditions whereby you could recognise a genuine business from an artificial one, and one possibly inside IR35 from one definitely outside. They would have worked and would have given a lot more clarity to the inside or outside IR35 decision.

The abortion that HMRC then adopted both signally failed to achieve that, and were a total surprise to the Forum

You can't help but wonder how much the original intent affected HMRC's decision to go with their own set. Couldn't possibly be because they don't want clarity and would prefer to drive contractors into IR35 or umbrellas out of fear and uncertainty, could it...?

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

The wider picture is that many accountants run scared of IR35 and assume any one person business is potentially caught regardless of client base, eg I saw a sole trader running a recruitment agency advised not to incorporate because of IR35. Not unusual. I also know of a six partner practice which won't take on any business where they there is an IR35 risk, "we don't know anything about it" (er, research, guys?)

To that end although the BETs put most contractors into medium or high risk, at least the took a huge swath of other businesses out of the clutches of numpty accountants over reaching their skill set.

[SueEllen]

You can't help but wonder how much the original intent affected HMRC's decision to go with their own set. Couldn't possibly be because they don't want clarity and would prefer to drive contractors into IR35 or umbrellas out of fear and uncertainty, could it...?

Which is more amusing considering HMRC has to use lots of contractors and they like other government departments resent spending money with the usual suspects.....