Did you know that there are currently two government units (one covering the north, the other the south) who are currently scrutinising the umbrella companies and how they operate?
I spoke to one of the main bods in the south district today, and apparently they want us all to go down the employed by employment business route - much like what exists with high street temp agencies.
It seems they are very, very unhappy with the current set up and don't agree that umbrella companies are bona fide - even safe brollies are under scrutint apparently not just the ones dealing with offshore dodgy FX schemes and so on.
Then he went on to tell me that they were currently undertaking a risk assessment about this matter.
Without going into detail, I deduced from that last statement that they are weighing up the pros and cons of keeping the status quo or changing it provided they don't end up losing tax revenues. Ethics clearly don't come into it if risk assessement lies at the heart of their efforts.
The funniest thing is this: I explained to them what the relationship was between IT employment businesses and umbrellas and he appeared not to know that IT contractors could not be self employed (self assessed) if they wanted to be. In fact, he appeared not to know very much at all about the way employment businesses in the IT field actually operate. To say he was pretty clueless about the way the current tax set up is for contractors was an understatement.
I spoke to one of the main bods in the south district today, and apparently they want us all to go down the employed by employment business route - much like what exists with high street temp agencies.
It seems they are very, very unhappy with the current set up and don't agree that umbrella companies are bona fide - even safe brollies are under scrutint apparently not just the ones dealing with offshore dodgy FX schemes and so on.
Then he went on to tell me that they were currently undertaking a risk assessment about this matter.
Without going into detail, I deduced from that last statement that they are weighing up the pros and cons of keeping the status quo or changing it provided they don't end up losing tax revenues. Ethics clearly don't come into it if risk assessement lies at the heart of their efforts.
The funniest thing is this: I explained to them what the relationship was between IT employment businesses and umbrellas and he appeared not to know that IT contractors could not be self employed (self assessed) if they wanted to be. In fact, he appeared not to know very much at all about the way employment businesses in the IT field actually operate. To say he was pretty clueless about the way the current tax set up is for contractors was an understatement.
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