HMRC announces change to the off-payroll working rules

[WordIsBond]

It makes sense for the change to occur at the beginning of the tax year.

Can you imagine the scare stories and untruths we would be seeing if the implementation date was November rather than April.

And while I know it's all going to hell in a handcart at least the experiment will finish soon and a suitable fix rapidly identified for those that need it.

It might make sense for it to occur at the beginning of the 2021-2022 tax year. But really, there's no reason it absolutely has to happen at the beginning of a tax year. Thousands of times, people have gone perm mid-tax year. Thousands of times, they've moved into umbrella roles mid-year. There is nothing complex about switching from outside to inside or vice verse mid-year. It didn't have to align with the tax year.

People are making panic-driven decisions in part because we don't even know exactly what the rules will be. We don't know how it works if you have an overseas client with no UK presence in the chain. We don't know if the contractor has any obligation to communicate with the client about it in such a case.

A week ago we didn't know how payments made after 6 April for work before then would be handled. We still don't know if CEST will be tweaked as a result of the reviews.

It's not surprising that the Torygraph might get something wrong on this, but when a publication for accountants gets it badly wrong less than two months before going live, it's obvious that it's been badly mishandled.

[eatenrifles]

It's not surprising that the Torygraph might get something wrong on this, but when a publication for accountants gets it badly wrong less than two months before going live, it's obvious that it's been badly mishandled.

Worth noting the Accountancy Daily article has been corrected from:

The government has confirmed that the rules will not be retrospective and changes to the operation of the off-payroll working rules will only apply to payments made for services provided on or after 6 April 2020, and will not be applied to contract work which is ongoing, for example a six-month contract which started in December 2019.

To:

The government has confirmed that the rules will not be retrospective and changes to the operation of the off-payroll working rules will only apply to payments made for services provided on or after 6 April 2020.

This means that the new rules will only affect the contract from 6 April and would not affect the pre-April 2020 element of the contract.

The government reversal means that the rules for medium and large organisations will take effect for work conducted from 6 April 2020 only.

[eek]

A week ago we didn't know how payments made after 6 April for work before then would be handled. We still don't know if CEST will be tweaked as a result of the reviews.

We did know how it was going to work last week - it was just going to be a very serious clusterf**k which meant it had to be changed to something that required a lot less work.

[ComplianceLady]

what is your perception of what will happen about contracts which continue after April and which started prior to April? Is there any substance in the report that these contracts won't be subject to the new rules?

Nope - nothing that I've seen. I do think we might see a GDPR style enforcement edict from the HOL review i.e. if you're trying to comply and can be seen to be doing so we won't come down on you so hard but I don't see how that can be squared with a liability being accrued. Just my feeling though.

[Unix]

So if I get a 24 month renewal now I'm good for 2 years

[ContractingBrit]

So if I get a 24 month renewal now I'm good for 2 years

Is this true?

[Paralytic]

Is this true?

No

[eek]

Is this true?

No