Crackdown on personal service companies could raise £400m in tax

[BA to the Stars]

Have many of you on here had much success in writing to your MP? I wrote a letter to mine which was basically a combination of the IPSE template, Lisa's template and a few bits of my own. I've had absolutely nothing back, even after emailing six-weeks later I received a reply from her secretary saying that a response "would be made a priority".

Maybe she didn't like the fact that I pointed out that MP's receive tax free expenses whilst they plan on taking ours away?

At least you had a reply, my Conservative MP has not replied to my letter of 7th September.

Next time he asks for my vote he may find that he has lost a life long Tory

[mudskipper]

At least you had a reply, my Conservative MP has not replied to my letter of 7th September.

Next time he asks for my vote he may find that he has lost a life long Tory

I hadn't heard from mine - I nudged him on Monday, he apologised that my email had got missed in the summer recess, and I had a full response (including the rumour) yesterday. I'm going to push him further for his personal opinion.

[woohoo]

At least you had a reply, my Conservative MP has not replied to my letter of 7th September.

Next time he asks for my vote he may find that he has lost a life long Tory

I wrote to the MP a while back about IR35, she did at least reply. Standard stuff in the reply, went in the bin.

[Jog On]

And that wouldn't be too bad. Better paye on £x per day than a ftc or a 'paid consultant' bodge up. Upsides would be not having to worry about changing projects within a client and not peeing everyone off by refusing to act like a permie.

If we got to keep the 5% expenses that would also help.

My main concern would be being on the payroll of client or agent as I think that would lead to a proliferation of the ftc or ec model.

Looks like acceptance of blanket IR35 is happening...

[Jog On]

Next time he asks for my vote he may find that he has lost a life long Tory

How do the rest of the die hard tory community feel about this (you know who you are) - anyone?

[Unix]

This is a balloon being floated to

a) scare people into staying/returning to permeidom
b) to make the eventual (less harsh) tax changes seem more palatable.

[Tasslehoff]

Almost Wikipedia definition to the letter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon

[psychocandy]

Not read the entire thread but if this goes through it will kill contracting stone dead. BUT one way to think about it...

Clients obviously still want contractors otherwise there'd be no market out there. Its obviously cost effective and convenient otherwise clients would just get permies in but they don't. This is an important point.

Expenses/Div tax changes. They mostly see us as overpaid tax dodgers. The fact that we've now got to pay more tax won't make an ounce of difference FOR NOW.

Eventually, they may well see a shortage of contractors and start to whinge about it but will take a LOT of time.

BUT, if this goes through and clients realise that, in effect, they can't use contractors any more. Then they realise the guy whos an integral part of they're project for 6 months now can't be there much longer. They are not going to want to suddenly increase their permie workforce. IT WILL CAUSE CHAOS.

At least then, clients will be on our side then and something might get done properly. Never know might see the whole thing revoked.

Personally, I don't think it will go through. No-one could be as stupid to do something like this. The fallout from everyone from clients, agencies, accountants would be incredulous.

[SandyD]

Anyone can see a solution apart from going perm ( am not sure if clients would want perm, I think it will be a sort of fixed term contract)

I don't want to work for multiple companies, working for one is stressful enough, plus which company accepts part time contractor nowadays- unless you are providing occasional or on-call support/maintenance...

Seems the whole issue from TV presenters working as contractors, but I would have thought many of them would work for different channels on different programs so easy to resolve for them...

[Martin Scroatman]

Just throwing a curveball inno the mix.

What would happen with security clearance which can take weeks to set up? They going to clear people for them to sod off before the project has even gat gung?