Roger Sinclair (Egos) on New HMRC IR35 guidance

[bobspud]

The thing is that at the moment my office is in my home.

+ 1

I built a self contained office at my home for the purpose of securely housing my business equipement, and working under my own control on behalf of my clients. I have spent the last year working in this environment, for the 6 years prior to that I used a dedicated room in my house with a full office setup. I have reduced my carbon footprint

Setting up my office last year cost me (not my company) the equivalent of 10 years local shared office space... Why am I all of a sudden a second class just because I DONT WANT to use a shared office or business premises? there are plenty around me... I could not go to an open shared space and work on government classified documents. I would not feel safe leaving my equipment in a building shared with others. I do not want to have to spend an hour a day driving somewhere just to sit on my own. and I can work far more flexibly (choosing to walk across to my office late at night to catch up on issues rather than having to drive to my office)

IMO This test will be the first one to be revised and I look forward to seeing it torn to shreds at the first opportunity...

[malvolio]

+ 1

I built a self contained office at my home for the purpose of securely housing my business equipement, and working under my own control on behalf of my clients. I have spent the last year working in this environment, for the 6 years prior to that I used a dedicated room in my house with a full office setup. I have reduced my carbon footprint

Setting up my office last year cost me (not my company) the equivalent of 10 years local shared office space... Why am I all of a sudden a second class just because I DONT WANT to use a shared office or business premises? there are plenty around me... I could not go to an open shared space and work on government classified documents. I would not feel safe leaving my equipment in a building shared with others. I do not want to have to spend an hour a day driving somewhere just to sit on my own. and I can work far more flexibly (choosing to walk across to my office late at night to catch up on issues rather than having to drive to my office)

IMO This test will be the first one to be revised and I look forward to seeing it torn to shreds at the first opportunity...

You're looking at this the wrong way. Try it from Hector's position. If you have business premises, you are a business, end of. If you don't you may not be so let's look at some other indicators. If you have pointless business premises just to pass this test, we will disregard them.

The test is valid, in its own way, it's just that it cannot sensibly be applied to anyone in the knowledge-based economy.

[bobspud]

You're looking at this the wrong way. Try it from Hector's position. If you have business premises, you are a business, end of. If you don't you may not be so let's look at some other indicators. If you have pointless business premises just to pass this test, we will disregard them.

The test is valid, in its own way, it's just that it cannot sensibly be applied to anyone in the knowledge-based economy.

You only need to look at the garden office industry over the last 5 - 10 years to see that millions of people want to work at home not in an office. I dare say that if I could find a way to build a silicon roundabout in the west country and pulled all the tech industry into a large warehouse to rent space and work freely it would be good for collaboration and quite a cool fun project however. I don't really want to. I want to work under my own control in my own environment partly because I am a grumpy git and partly because I used to clock up well over a thousand miles a week sitting on the M4 and other than a few catchup days a week I don't want to travel...

So I have the choice of renting out my beautiful cocoon of peace and tranquility and moving into an office somewhere else or staying put and losing 10 points...

[Raxme]

You only need to look at the garden office industry over the last 5 - 10 years ..... beautiful cocoon of peace and tranquility and moving into an office somewhere else or staying put and losing 10 points...

Everyone needs to stop looking at it from their own point of view (of trying to avoid IR35). The whole basis of the business tests (as released) are to avoid HMRC wasting their time on you if you are [in the probable minority of being] a "genuine" business. For "genuine", HRMC-speak means, unfortunately for them and their tax-gathering targets you found it rather easy to demonstrate (and document) that you are highly unlikely to be caught under IR35 so they'd better not waste their valuable time on you.

Of course, if you can get a high point count you were highly unlikely to have been much worried by IR35 anyway, so the tests are pretty much a waste of everyone's efforts.

What is useful from the tests and the other content of the guidance document is that you can gather a clear picture of the HMRC mindset, and it is doubly clear that they have not changed their position one iota - particularly in terms of the contract-by-contract approach - much against what was touted some weeks back.

Let's face it, HMRC are never ever going to change their spots until such time as they are forced to by their immediate masters. Even then, they'll just paint over their spots until the next time a government is short of cash.

Everyone: get over it; the tests have failed. Do what you can as per usual, insure yourself, get on with life