Is IR35 dead any more?

[Mailman]

Am I allowed to? I got into trouble last time. Oh, all right then.

Ah, thought you were talking about the PCG morons!

Mailman

[Diestl]

If someone was to do a Friday to Monday and get a very Ir35 avoiding contract and joined PCG and got the insurance, would you say they were covered from being bent over by the HMRC?

[malvolio]

The PCG insurance doesn't cover your for IR35, in covers you for the £10-15k cost of the representation you will need if you are being investigated. It is not conditional on anything other than being a member and covers all your contracts. Other companies offer similar representation costs cover at roughly similar prices, but some of them want to review your contract first, which is not unreasonable, and some of them are on a per contract basis (which implies that you will need to have multiple policies for 6 years per contract but don't quote me on that, I've never really looked).

The other insurances that cover you for back tax and penalties are actually a little bit of a sales exercise, since they won't offer it to you if they don't think you are outside IR35 so there is unlikely to be any back tax, and if there's no back tax there won't be any penalties; nor will there be penalties if you have made an efort to ascertain your status, such as by having the contract reviewed. So what are they offering that PCG doesn't already do for free and others do rather more cheaply, you might ask. Good question...

[Diestl]

I've picked up on the forum that having the PCG insurance would put a potential HMRC investigator off investigating?

[malvolio]

Aporchryphal, but possible: if you were going to chase someone with a dodgy piece of legislation and a very great uncertainty of success, would you choose the one with the education and backing to fight back, or the one who knows nothing...?

To be brutally honest, IR35 only survives because non-PCG-educated morons insist on paying it unnecessarily, or refusing to use umbrellas if they are genuinely caught. If the income was as low as it should be, making it uneconomic to collect, it would probably get quietly dropped

[Diestl]

So worse case scenario I claim outside Ir35 on all contracts for the next 10 years, if I get investigated years down the line, it will be based on one contract? So if they have all been 3-6 monthers and if the HMRC is successful then I only have to pay back around 1k back tax and continue as before?

[ASB]

The other insurances that cover you for back tax and penalties are actually a little bit of a sales exercise, since they won't offer it to you if they don't think you are outside IR35 so there is unlikely to be any back tax

Quite. But an interesting strategy might be to submit the application, find you are acceptable based on the review and then not proceed....