Dummy Clients & IR35

[KennyG]

One of the factors in favour of someone being deemed outside of IR35 is obviously having several Clients rather than just turning up at the same place and possibly being considered an employee by HMRC. Has anyone ever issued occasional invoices to 'Clients' (friends?) and done a cash deal with them so as they appear to have several Clients?

[DimPrawn]

Don't bother. Just act like a business. Demand B2B IR35 friendly terms and then avoid MOO and have an unfettered right of substitution. Remove direction and control from your contracts and working practices.

Then have your contracts reviewed by someone like LawSpeed and join the PCG and get their IR35 investigation insurance.

That will take care of all IR35 issues. Then relax.

You hare-brained scheme of fake invoices is just going to land you in trouble.

[IR35 Avoider]

Each contract is assessed in isolation, multiple clients is not going to make much difference. You will be committing a criminal offence that won't actually reduce you tax bill even if the offence goes undetected. If you are investigated it probably will be detected. I suspect that you can be convicted of fraud even though there was never any chance that the fraud was going to yield any profit.

[Euro-commuter]

One of the factors in favour of someone being deemed outside of IR35 is obviously having several Clients...

Wrong! "Someone" is neither inside or outside IR35. A given contract is either inside or outside.

You should stop paying attention to whoever told you that. Doubly so if it was only your own feverish imagination.

[Euro-commuter]

Hasn't it occured to you yet that you are actually meant to be in business on your own account, not pretending to be, to qualify for being outside IR35.

It's this kind of thinking that drops us all in the tulip.

If you want to be outside IR35 then start behaving like a real business rather than wasting energy looking like you are when you aren't.

Hear! Hear!

[ASB]

I rather imagine the spectre of false accounting could rear its rather ugly head.

[pisces]

Hasn't it occured to you yet that you are actually meant to be in business on your own account, not pretending to be, to qualify for being outside IR35.

It's this kind of thinking that drops us all in the tulip.

If you want to be outside IR35 then start behaving like a real business rather than wasting energy looking like you are when you aren't.

How do you behave like a business if you are on one contract?

[Euro-commuter]

How do you behave like a business if you are on one contract?

How to behave like a business is really easy: be one. And don't try to pretend to be what you're not, just to evade tax. That is what got us all a bad name.