I run a small company with a couple of other people. Our company also has a small number of subcontractors (Ltd Co) that we use to provide our services.
All of our work is currently with a single client however we are looking to diversify our customer base.
Our client is a large organisation and the people making IR35 determinations are meeting our "business sponsor" soon to better understand our working practices.
Our business sponsor realises that if we're deemed to be inside then we're out the door and his ability to do his job is completely torpedoed. Accordingly, he has asked me to give him a sense of any things he might want to emphasise, or anything he might want to avoid overplaying, so as to achieve his preferred outcome of us being deemed outside IR35 by his determinations people.
I don't profess to be an expert on such matters but if I could give him a short bullet-point list of things to bring up, are there any "killer phrases" that people can recommend that could completely tilt the determination one way or the other?
For the avoidance of doubt, I have no desire, and neither does my client, to be disingenuous or misleading (to the best of my knowledge, we are legitimately, demonstrably outside IR35). Rather, he simply wants to ensure he doesn't miss any opportunities to make clear things that, through naivety, he might not realise are significant, and nor does he want to misrepresent things in a way that has the potential to lead to the conclusion he's keen not to arrive at.
My reading around the subject suggests that it boils down to substitution, control and mutuality of obligation but are there any "plain English" phrases that might be able to be dropped into a conversation, that they might be listening out for?
If it helps, I think we can demonstrate that we've used substitution, that we aren't controlled by our client, and that our client is not required to provide us with work beyond that which we are contracted to provide (and that we aren't required to accept any and all of the work we're offered beyond the terms of our current contract). I think we can also demonstrate that we've incurred financial loss (albeit nominal) when we've made a small mistake in the work we've done - this alone doesn't necessarily demonstrate that we're taking significant financial risk but I'd hope it illustrates that a principle and precedent have been established and enforced that has the potential to be enforced with larger consequences if bigger mistakes were to be made.
Any thoughts/ideas/advice very gratefully received.
All of our work is currently with a single client however we are looking to diversify our customer base.
Our client is a large organisation and the people making IR35 determinations are meeting our "business sponsor" soon to better understand our working practices.
Our business sponsor realises that if we're deemed to be inside then we're out the door and his ability to do his job is completely torpedoed. Accordingly, he has asked me to give him a sense of any things he might want to emphasise, or anything he might want to avoid overplaying, so as to achieve his preferred outcome of us being deemed outside IR35 by his determinations people.
I don't profess to be an expert on such matters but if I could give him a short bullet-point list of things to bring up, are there any "killer phrases" that people can recommend that could completely tilt the determination one way or the other?
For the avoidance of doubt, I have no desire, and neither does my client, to be disingenuous or misleading (to the best of my knowledge, we are legitimately, demonstrably outside IR35). Rather, he simply wants to ensure he doesn't miss any opportunities to make clear things that, through naivety, he might not realise are significant, and nor does he want to misrepresent things in a way that has the potential to lead to the conclusion he's keen not to arrive at.
My reading around the subject suggests that it boils down to substitution, control and mutuality of obligation but are there any "plain English" phrases that might be able to be dropped into a conversation, that they might be listening out for?
If it helps, I think we can demonstrate that we've used substitution, that we aren't controlled by our client, and that our client is not required to provide us with work beyond that which we are contracted to provide (and that we aren't required to accept any and all of the work we're offered beyond the terms of our current contract). I think we can also demonstrate that we've incurred financial loss (albeit nominal) when we've made a small mistake in the work we've done - this alone doesn't necessarily demonstrate that we're taking significant financial risk but I'd hope it illustrates that a principle and precedent have been established and enforced that has the potential to be enforced with larger consequences if bigger mistakes were to be made.
Any thoughts/ideas/advice very gratefully received.
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