Can you afford to go perm or inside IR35?

[jamesbrown]

I'm at a loss as to why you are talking about illegal deductions as they just don't exist - Key Information Documents (used correctly) make them perfectly legal and they've been in place for a 9 months now.

Eventually, you got to your actual point. I'm at a loss as to why you think this, even with your "used correctly" qualification. The law is perfectly clear: illegal deductions do exist, have always existed, and a key information document doesn't change that. My point about a contract spanning April 6 2021 is simply an illustration of how a Fee Payer is most exposed to illegal deductions. Fees should be negotiated at the start of a project. Your assertion in #68 that you can simply provide a new key information document to justify any new deduction is wildly optimistic. Sure, these documents are living documents because deductions change over time, but they are not meant to justify the deduction of employment costs from fees due. The purpose of a key information document is to provide clarity and transparency, not to override the SSCBA and the ERA. I'm sure we'll have new case law in due course. As you say yourself, these documents have only been around since April 2020.

Anyway, I think LM made a perfectly simple point, as I understood it, and you've weighed in with some presumed certainty about a "fundamental" error when it seems to me that your argument is based on opinion and a small number of cases surrounding (partly) lawful deductions, so your certainty is entirely misplaced.

[eek]

Eventually, you got to your actual point. I'm at a loss as to why you think this, even with your "used correctly" qualification. The law is perfectly clear: illegal deductions do exist, have always existed, and a key information document doesn't change that. My point about a contract spanning April 6 2021 is simply an illustration of how a Fee Payer is most exposed to illegal deductions. Fees should be negotiated at the start of a project. Your assertion in #68 that you can simply provide a new key information document to justify any new deduction is wildly optimistic. Sure, these documents are living documents because deductions change over time, but they are not meant to justify the deduction of employment costs from fees due. The purpose of a key information document is to provide clarity and transparency, not to override the SSCBA and the ERA. I'm sure we'll have new case law in due course. As you say yourself, these documents have only been around since April 2020.

Anyway, I think LM made a perfectly simple point, as I understood it, and you've weighed in with some presumed certainty about a "fundamental" error when it seems to me that your argument is based on opinion and a small number of cases surrounding (partly) lawful deductions, so your certainty is entirely misplaced.

And you are very much going down the wormhole that umbrella reclaim are going down - claiming illegal deductions exist when the deductions are valid and legal and the issue as demonstrated in the employment tribunal will be one of poor explanation.

[jamesbrown]

And you are very much going down the wormhole that umbrella reclaim are going down - claiming illegal deductions exist when the deductions are valid and legal and the issue as demonstrated in the employment tribunal will be one of poor explanation.

Poor explanation and unlawful deduction are two entirely separate things. Poor explanation (or even adequate explanation coupled with poor understanding) will be common, naturally, and unlawful deduction will be less common, naturally, but the idea that a key information document is the silver bullet to avoiding unlawful deductions will, I think, be proven false. The point of maximum risk approaches with April 2021, so it hasn’t even happened yet and we’ll see more ETs in due course.

[eek]

Poor explanation and unlawful deduction are two entirely separate things. Poor explanation (or even adequate explanation coupled with poor understanding) will be common, naturally, and unlawful deduction will be less common, naturally, but the idea that a key information document is the silver bullet to avoiding unlawful deductions will, I think, be proven false. The point of maximum risk approaches with April 2021, so it hasn’t even happened yet and we’ll see more ETs in due course.

If it was an issue we would have seen a whole pile of employment tribunals already as the public sector changes were implemented in 2018 and we haven't. I keep an eye out for them and the issue is nearly always unpaid holiday pay and lack of redundancy.

In factthe law firm trying to make a market out of dodgy umbrella deductions can't find an actual tribunal that proves their point - their only example (now removed) related to a default judgement for less than £2k when no defence was offered.

There is literally nothing new here - April 2021 is just an expansion of what happened before.