I am going to open a computer shop to justify being outside IR35

[IR35equalshateoflittleguy]

Do you think opening a computer shop on a high street or renting an office space would justify me as an organisation enough to end clients that they could comfortably qualify my arrangement with them as being outside IR35, without the small handed rats at HMRC sticking their greedy noses in to the arrangement to say otherwise?

[courtg9000]

Won't HMRC get you on the individual contract and then go looking at all the others?

I tried similar when IR35 first came out back in 2000. Got reseller agreements the lot. Had Lenovo, Dell, MS, Sophos, Citrix, Cisco and lots more. It was a lot of work. Would I take this route again? Very unlikely. Ergo only if there was no other choice.

I got into trading small internet businesses in 2004 and this was better but it took me until 2013 to make it into a day job and a career change and even then I still had to do the odd "contract" (not IT) until last year. If I had to do this over again, would I? I would love to! The brain is more than willing but the rest of the body is not!

[malvolio]

No.

I'll leave you to work out why, but it's in the relevant legislation...

[cojak]

Do you think opening a computer shop on a high street or renting an office space would justify me as an organisation enough to end clients that they could comfortably qualify my arrangement with them as being outside IR35, without the small handed rats at HMRC sticking their greedy noses in to the arrangement to say otherwise?

No if the 'outside' IR35 contract isn't.

If the contract really is outside you wouldn't need all of this shenanigans.

[IR35equalshateoflittleguy]

I am going to quit IT then.

[Lance]

let's just suspend reality for one second and work on the basis that having some business premises is an indicator of IR35 status....


How would you persuade a client, who has already declared the role as inside, and they have the budget, and you've started work so you have already accepted those terms, to change their mind when the risk of it being wrong will cost them?

[Lance]

I am going to quit IT then.

blimey.
That escalated fast from question to flounce.
Client's must love your attitude.

[eek]

If what you are doing is regarded by the end client as staff replacement then you are inside IR35

heck if the government back in 2001 had implemented IR35 the way they wanted to contractors would never had had to do their own determinations - it would have always been at the end clients risk

[IR35equalshateoflittleguy]

let's just suspend reality for one second and work on the basis that having some business premises is an indicator of IR35 status....


How would you persuade a client, who has already declared the role as inside, and they have the budget, and you've started work so you have already accepted those terms, to change their mind when the risk of it being wrong will cost them?

I would refuse any new inside IR35 roles on the basis that I am operating as a company not as an employee.

[courtg9000]

On the other hand the analysis I have done suggests that probably the only way out of this is to provide a product or products with support contracts.

This sort of route would depend on multiple clients though.
The problem with this is that most companies that engage contractors don't want products, they want a bum on a chair and often they are not always absolutely clear on what they want that bum on a chair to exactly and actually do!
I managed to create some product/service combo's for my post IT stuff but these solve specific problems for a certain market. I had planned to add modules that could be slightly tweaked.