Contract review says I'm inside IR35 - colleagues working as outside

[DirtyDog]

Perhaps a good reason for not getting a contract professionally reviewed?

It's catch-22 - if HMRC come calling and find you inside and you didn't do any due diligence, then they will probably hammer you for deliberate evasion and add on penalties.

[stek]

The contract is the first thing HMRC will look at in an enquiry. If, for instance, your working practices were all fine but you had a dodgy agency contract with a fettered RoS, HMRC would undoubtedly focus on that. It would make things quite difficult - despite the reality of the situation being compliant.

Conversely then, if you contract was reviewed as inside, and your treated as a pemie in practice (as in this case) then all is fine and in fact, working practices don't matter?

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

I think that getting a contract re-written to reflect working practices that are not a reality is simply asking for trouble

[javadude]

One thing I've found is that client written contracts can be written by HR who don't understand how contractors are really working in the organisation. They know the rules that are applied to employees and assume that contractors adhere to those rules and work in the same way, but that's not necessarily the case. I've worked in a company where I'm more self-managing, decide how I work, not attending/invited to corporate meetings, work from home more, keep different hours etc etc. HR probably wouldn't like it as I wasn't following employee rules but I wasn't an employee and the business contacts were happy with how I was providing the service.

[northernladuk]

It's very difficult for me to know how to renegotiate the contract. B&C gave me the impression there was nothing I could do. What the client really wants are permanent employees, the contractors are just filling the gaps and doing whatever work the permies would be doing.

To be honest, if B&C say you are screwed then there is no point discussing it any further. They will have worked with you if there was some wiggle room. If they gave you an outright no then it can't be any clearer. You also covered the whole situation in that last sentence. No way that situation could be outside IR35.

You have your answer. Time to either suck it up or work. Nothing else to do here.

[eek]

You have your answer. Time to either suck it up or work. Nothing else to do here.

No time to make a large pension contribution and find something else in 3 months time.....