November 22nd - The death of contracting as we know it

[BrilloPad]

Interesting the date is 22nd November. The date that Maggie got thrown under a bus.

[Big Blue Plymouth]

Contrary to popular belief, most contractors do it for the freedom and the extra money, not for tax savings. (Right, lads and lasses?). If the govt. wants to "level the playing field", perhaps it could start by unifying NI and income tax, as it promised to do in 2010.

Up to a point but I certainly won't be getting up at 4:30 am on a Monday morning to do a Monday - Friday stopover when I'm footing the bill from my personal finances. Many others I talk to say the same.

[Lance]

Contrary to popular belief, most contractors do it for the freedom and the extra money, not for tax savings. (Right, lads and lasses?). If the govt. wants to "level the playing field", perhaps it could start by unifying NI and income tax, as it promised to do in 2010.

Hear hear.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy not paying NI but it isn’t fair and it isn’t right.

I think if these changes are rolled out to private sector then clients will move the disguised employees to FTC and make an outside declaration for the others. They will also make sure that working practices are done properly so for real contractors this may well work out better.
Although I don’t have a crystal ball.

[eek]

Up to a point but I certainly won't be getting up at 4:30 am on a Monday morning to do a Monday - Friday stopover when I'm footing the bill from my personal finances. Many others I talk to say the same.

That's the killer difference - already the public sector are finding that some areas just don't have a big enough local contracting workforce to make inside IR35 contracts worthwhile.

Yes they can still get people on £400 a day but the amount delivered and the quality of the work achieved is far far less...

[mudskipper]

The £440 million made up figure is now a £700 million made up figure.

[jamesbrown]

The £440 million made up figure is now a £700 million made up figure.

The figure corresponds to whatever gap they want to fill with it.

[unixman]

Up to a point but I certainly won't be getting up at 4:30 am on a Monday morning to do a Monday - Friday stopover when I'm footing the bill from my personal finances. Many others I talk to say the same.

Very true. Clients, if they want freelancers, will have to either pay £100 p/d more, let us WFH, or hire local. Let them fight it out with Hammond.

[Swamp Thing]

I realise this will sound naïve, but where is the debate, the balanced argument, on what contractors do pay that PAYE's don't? E.g. corporation tax, VAT (in some cases), dividend tax.

Surely some analysts have done the math for HMRC, to show that these tax receipts will drop by shoving freelancers into PAYE.

Have I missed something? Or is HMRC simply being obtuse about such distinctions?

I won't both listing the risks that freelancers take and the things they do without c/w PAYEs. I can see HMRC doesn't want to take those on board.

[eek]

This battle is now over NI and especially employers ni. Apart from that a contractor and a permanent staff member pay roughly the same percentage of tax.

[BrilloPad]

This battle is now over NI and especially employers ni. Apart from that a contractor and a permanent staff member pay roughly the same percentage of tax.

A really stupid question : what about income shifting?