Hammond Plans tax crackdown on fake self employed

[Yorkie62]

Hammond plans tax crackdown on 'synthetic self-employed' - BBC News

[vwdan]

I love this:

The Treasury believes a third of people claiming self-employed status as a "personal service company" are actually full employees and should pay more tax.

Believes, but consistently fails to prove. Surely they should be breezing through IR35 investigations if this is the case.

I still, broadly, think that moving the IR35 changes to the Private sector will actually be good for proper contractors as it'll force clients to engage us properly.

[fiisch]

You're a bit slow to the punch...: https://www.contractoruk.com/forums/...-employed.html

[Unai Emery]

I love this:



Believes, but consistently fails to prove. Surely they should be breezing through IR35 investigations if this is the case.

I still, broadly, think that moving the IR35 changes to the Private sector will actually be good for proper contractors as it'll force clients to engage us properly.

Well, yes and that's exactly what my PS client has been forced to do otherwise they just can't get the bods to do the work.

I'm sure that will become a lot easier once we've signed up to some post Brexit trade deal with India or wherever though

[Adriantoth]

Every word of the above tallies with my thoughts/practice.
I also think it might even make IR35 a harder nut for HMRC to tackle in the future. Reason being now contractor and client will both very much be keen to work together to ensure outside IR35 status. Up to now, the end client doesn't really care whether the contract/working practices are inside IR35 or not as it doesn't impact them. Therefore sometimes the client can inadvertently "drop the contractor in it" by saying something unhelpful about how they do control the contractor/would not accept a substitute etc.

Read more here <mod snip>

[Hobosapien]

Doubt clients will be rushing to prove contracts are outside IR35. If HMRC don't understand IR35 well enough to defend it in court then they can't expect clients to have enough confidence in it, so risk assessment means those clients will look for a safer path.

The recent case where client ended up paying employee related benefit costs to contractor (holiday pay) means clients won't be rushing to prove contracts are inside IR35 either.

Result: clients less willing to use contractors. Consultancies win. Which is likely the game plan all along.

[Unai Emery]

Every word of the above tallies with my thoughts/practice.
I also think it might even make IR35 a harder nut for HMRC to tackle in the future. Reason being now contractor and client will both very much be keen to work together to ensure outside IR35 status. Up to now, the end client doesn't really care whether the contract/working practices are inside IR35 or not as it doesn't impact them. Therefore sometimes the client can inadvertently "drop the contractor in it" by saying something unhelpful about how they do control the contractor/would not accept a substitute etc.

Read more here <mod snip>

I'd have been interested to have read that.

Why was the url removed from the post??

[TestMangler]

Doubt clients will be rushing to prove contracts are outside IR35. If HMRC don't understand IR35 well enough to defend it in court then they can't expect clients to have enough confidence in it, so risk assessment means those clients will look for a safer path.

The recent case where client ended up paying employee related benefit costs to contractor (holiday pay) means clients won't be rushing to prove contracts are inside IR35 either.

Result: clients less willing to use contractors. Consultancies win. Which is likely the game plan all along.

This !