I have a contract but no work

[VectraMan]

One further thought on all this:

As a director of a company you have a responsibility to the company. It seems to me that if you change the way you work to ensure you're outside IR35, you're putting your personal tax position ahead of the best interests of the company, and if you're doing that then it's fair to say you're not acting as a true business. You're acting as an individual who is using the business for tax avoidance purposes.

If you are acting as a true business, then you'd act as if you as director and you as the person that actually provides the services are two different people. And you the director might reasonably expect you the employee to work full time hours and to do everything to keep the client happy with the service provided, even if that means working under the control of the client.

It's a very odd thing that we're selling our services as highly skilled individuals, yet the way we often work (paid per hour, no obligation to be available for work or for work to be provided) has more in common with unskilled casual labour.

[Denny]

One further thought on all this:

As a director of a company you have a responsibility to the company. It seems to me that if you change the way you work to ensure you're outside IR35, you're putting your personal tax position ahead of the best interests of the company, and if you're doing that then it's fair to say you're not acting as a true business. You're acting as an individual who is using the business for tax avoidance purposes..

What a load of bollocks.

For a start, being a limited company is intrinsically about working on your own terms according to the IR35 exemption criteria listed by the IR. How many limited companies that don't ever worry about IR35 and who have their own office premises and probably employ staff (most clients do this) do you know work on their own clients' sites and get treated like employee under the control of some psuedo boss? Only IT contractors and other office based one-man bands, it seems to me.

You are getting things in a real muddle. We are owner managed businesses, we are also forced by EBs to be limited company businesses (let's not forget that, as many would be happy to freelance as a sole trader) - either by using a brolly where we get fleeced for full tax, minus phoney dispensation allowances, pay an admin fee, have someone else control our destiny posing as a representive of us their 'in every sense of the word' employee - oh! and don't forget being fleeced for both employer and employee NI. Otherwise, we have our own limited. By default that means our commericial relationship with the client should reflect that reality in practice; its not for the EB and client to join forces to then set about perversing that proper commercial arrangement as they do by expecting us up to sign up to back-to-back or IR35 friendly (not back-to-back) terms that doesn't reflect what a limited company (or even freelancer, for that matter) is supposed to stand for. Working on your own account without MOO implied or otherwise, working where, how and when you like etc and using your own equipment when its possible to do so.

It's more a question of EBs and clients trying to avoid employee rights for us, but still treated us as employees, it's not about us trying to avoid tax. They are in the wrong (wanting their cake and eating it too) not us.

Likewise, the whole concept of limited company brollies is unheard of by acorn sized-one man band limiteds who became limited to gain a reputation in the marketplace with the intention of growing (the proper reason for having one). I even spoke with a tax adviser about brollies and when I explained to him what they were - not only had he not heard of them, he seemed disguisted by the whole concept of them. Brollies have grown out of the perversity of the client to EB to contractor officer worker relationship. They're merely there to reinforce that perversity. They certainly do not reflect what normal businesses would consider either rational or reasonable as a way of managing their tax affairs. Similarly, they wouldn't consider working on their own clients' site all day every day exclusively like an employee anything close to 'normal' business practice either.

Got it? No go on home, like a good boy!

[XperTest]

I think most of us agree with everything you say wholeheartedly. Especially this bit:

It's more a question of EBs and clients trying to avoid employee rights for us, but still treated us as employees, it's not about us trying to avoid tax. They are in the wrong (wanting their cake and eating it too) not us.

However how we decide to cope with this situation seems to be the main difference. You accept this legislation for what it is and try to work your way around it in "unnatural" ways, causing Vectraman to point out (correctly imo) that the way your company operates shouldn't be dependent on how the director/shareholder can optimise their personal tax situation. We say: look, this legislation is crap and unapplicable to IT contracting. We are not pseudo employees, nor do we want to be. On the other hand we are not all entrepreneurs and many of us don't want to be forced into pretending to be one. We are simply a flexible workforce, and in today's economy it looks like this will become everymore important, so Westminster sort it out..