back to article Contractors slam UK taxman's 'aggressive' IR35 tax reforms

HMRC should rethink its "aggressive" approach to IR35 tax reforms as it looks to extend them to the private sector, tax insurance provider Qdos Contractor has warned. According to Qdos, the UK taxman's approach to the changes is perceived as a threat to the self-employed way of working – at a time when political uncertainty …

  1. RGE_Master

    Having been hit not only by this, but also by the prospect of being bankrupt and financially crippled due to the Loan Charge, I can 100% confirm that as this continues, more and more people are being pushed into a debt that will be unattainable to clear as well as the prospect of losing their home.

    Ultimately, the government is about the completely screw over thousands of people as they try to scrimp all and anything they can out of the common worker.

    I'm having the leave the country for a year travelling in order to not then be hit by an assessment of earnings.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Loan Charge?

      Don't have a hue amount of sympathy about the "Loan Charge". This is where people were paid in Employee Benefit Trust Loans because loans weren't taxable. The standard thing was to be paid 7K in salary and take the rest of the money as tax free loans. HMRC started chasing this about 6-7 years ago and changed the law to bring all EBT loans from 2000 to the present into scope for taxation as salary.

      This differs from being a PLC contractor because we actually do pay tax (corporation tax, VAT, employers NI, employees NI personal tax, dividend tax, etc).

      There is an "opportunity" to settle and pay HMRC what is owed and be indemnified against future investigations on EBT loans. If you do this you can negotiate payment terms and pay them over a number of years.

      I've done both. I have a moderately sized loan charge I have to pay but I've settled with HMRC. I did the EBT thing for about a year when I started contracting because it seemed easy and my head was turned by the money. I dumped it when I started my second contract because I had realised that, if something seems too good to be true it probably is.

      When HMRC contacted me about the EBT thing I immediately started putting cash aside for this because, as they say, the only certainties are death and taxes. If HMRC wanted the money, they were going to get it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Loan Charge?

        Well, Loan Charges are highly debatable. People have been submitting their Tax Returns with those loans declared over all those years and HMRC were signing those off. Once Tax Return is submitted, HMRC had a year to complain, yet, they have not challenged a single one. Roll on 15 years later, they are declaring all those loans "illegal" since 1999, and are trying to retrospectively charge tax on those practices they have never challenged. the way this change was presented to the MPs is a different matter for discussion.

        PS

        How about government change speed limit now to 60mph, valid from 1999, and then issue penalty notices for everyone doing 70mph since?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Loan Charge?

          I agree that loan charges are highly debatable. But I disagree with your comparison.

          There is no law saying that EBTs were acceptable practice. The whole EBT structure was based on several written opinions by barristers. It was a grey area. What happened was that HMRC came out and said "this isn't right and we're taxing these". Basically, HMRC clarified what was and wasn't acceptable. Your comparison with speeding is based on them retrospectively changing the law. They didn't actually do this.

          Where I do agree with you is to say that they're now going to go back over all tax returns since 1999. There is a 2 year period where HMRC can challenge your tax return if it believes there are inaccuracies and go after any money it thinks you owe it. They basically got this waived. I agree with you that this is dodgy. They really should have gone after everyone and said "you owe us for the past 2 years and you can't do this going forward".

          1. Gordan

            Re: Loan Charge?

            "There is no law saying that EBTs were acceptable practice."

            And there is also no law saying that doing 70mph on the motorway is acceptable practice. Anything that is not prohibited is permitted, that is the nature of laws everywhere. This income was legally declared, open to HMRC scrutiny, and could have been challenged any time since. The fact they did not do so in even a single case within the time period in which they were obliged to do so implicitly makes it legitimate. So the comparison is in fact absolutely spot on. It really is equivalent of retroactively reducing the speed limit and then sending everyone who exceeded the new speed limit going all the way back 19 years speeding tickets.

            1. Lee D Silver badge

              Re: Loan Charge?

              No, it's the same as saying "the limit is 70". Then some barrister / website somewhere says "Hey, if you do 20 while on the back of a long lorry that's doing 70, you can technically do 90!"

              Then after putting in expenses claims for "long lorries" for X number of years, claiming that it should be legal to drive at 90 so long as *you're* not doing more than 70 on the back of a lorry doing less than 70. Then finding out that's NOT what the law says when the first speed camera goes up. Then having to pay back all those speeding offences you just admitted to doing while you were boasting about your scheme.

              It may have been *recorded*, that does not mean it's legal, nor does it mean that HMRC's "absence of enforcement" is somehow a legal "let".

              Yeah, it's sneaky to back-date quite so far. But it's also incredibly sneaky to play games to get around paying tax, even if some lawyer says they "should" be legal (e.g. all the celebrities pumping money into tax schemes later ruled illegal - they didn't escape scrutiny and back-dated demands either).

              Unless HMRC say "Yes, you can claim that", then you likely can't. Just putting a number on a box on a tax form is not HMRC rubber-stamping your processes.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Loan Charge?

                @ Lee D

                Actually, it turns out that what HMRC say is often wrong and irrelevant. What IS relevant is what the law and the judge say, which, as has been demonstrated time and again over IR35, isn't even close to what HMRC says.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Loan Charge?

              The law that sets speed limits is the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (you'll want to look at section 6).

              This is the difference between legal opinion and law. Legal opinion does not have the force of law, it is merely someone expressing a view on existing regulation. EBT payment structures were based on legal opinions that it was OK (oopsie) and needed to be registered on your tax return (mine was).

              The law that is making us pay HMRC extra tax is F(No 2)A 2017, Sch 11. This basically says that if you have been taking EBTs you can either

              a) pay them back

              b) treat them as taxable and pay by 2019

              So, is it retrospective? Not really. It's saying if you have these things we're going to tax you on them.

              1. Gordan

                Re: Loan Charge?

                "The law that sets speed limits is the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (you'll want to look at section 6)."

                OK, I'll bite, and I just looked at the exact wording. The gist of it is that it states that it is not permitted to exceed the speed limit. Nowhere in that document does it explicitly state that it is permitted to drive under it. So the analogy does in fact seem to hold, and the general principle of the law is that everything that is not forbidden is permitted.

            3. LucreLout

              Re: Loan Charge?

              And there is also no law saying that doing 70mph on the motorway is acceptable practice.

              Sorry, but that isn't true. [1,2]

              Anything that is not prohibited is permitted, that is the nature of laws everywhere.

              While that is generally true of the UK [3], it isn't wholly accurate I'm afraid.[4] Ex post facto law occasionally changes past relationships.

              This income was legally declared, open to HMRC scrutiny, and could have been challenged any time since.

              It could, and I'd agree, it should have been challenged. However, there is no requirement to do so. Gordon Brown, if I'm not mistaken, was the first chancellor to apply ex post facto legislation to tax affairs, so it's not without precedent.[5]

              The fact they did not do so in even a single case within the time period in which they were obliged to do so implicitly makes it legitimate.

              Unfortunately implicitly legitimate and actually legitimate aren't the same thing. Again, given the law may be changed retrospectively, and there is history of past chancellors retrospectively taxing what they see as evasion or at least unfair avoidance, how sure could you really be that an artificially complex offshore structure wouldn't come back to bite? Really?

              It really is equivalent of retroactively reducing the speed limit and then sending everyone who exceeded the new speed limit going all the way back 19 years speeding tickets.

              Sorry, but it really isn't. Speed limits are specifically authorised in law, and avoiding tax using EBT, which is really their only purpose, simply isn't authorised in law. It exploited a grey area in tax legislation, which is the industry I work in for a bank, and its really no suprise to most in the industry that this chicken came home to roost.

              You'll find I've backstopped everything with a citation. Please do the same when disputing what I've said. I know you are upset at the changes, but the harder you press tax avoidance, the more it looks to the tax man like evasion, and EBTs press harder than was perhaps wise.

              1 - https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/traffic-signs-signals-and-road-markings

              2 - https://www.gov.uk/speed-limits

              3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_which_is_not_forbidden_is_allowed

              4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law

              5 - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1514972/Brown-hits-millions-with-backdated-wealth-tax.html

          2. Velv
            Headmaster

            Re: Loan Charge?

            There is a 2 year period where HMRC can challenge your tax return if it believes there are inaccuracies and go after any money it thinks you owe it.

            It is also written in law that HMRC can go back up to 20 years if they believe you have been committing tax evasion, so the legality of a loan you are not expected to pay back is brought into question. And let’s be honest and moral here, any loan you receive that you are never expected to pay back is not really a loan, its a payment.

            Or perhaps your out with HMRC is to repay the loan (which I suspect will be a larger sum you don’t have than the tax HMRC expect on it)

            1. Gordan

              Re: Loan Charge?

              "It is also written in law that HMRC can go back up to 20 years if they believe you have been committing tax evasion, so the legality of a loan you are not expected to pay back is brought into question."

              Except this is not tax _evasion_, and such schemes have not been ruled illegal. So the 20 year rule seems like it should not be applicable.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Loan Charge?

                Of course it is tax evasion. You have income, but by choosing to call it a loan that you never had an intention of paying, you hope to recharacterize that income into something that's not taxable. If you had your employer bury cash in your backyard, then "find" it five minutes later, that's another way of trying to recharacterize your income as something else to avoid taxes, which would equally deserve to be called tax evasion.

                In the US, a forgiven loan is taxable income, so this sort of thing would have never come up.

              2. LucreLout

                Re: Loan Charge?

                Except this is not tax _evasion_, and such schemes have not been ruled illegal. So the 20 year rule seems like it should not be applicable.

                It may not have been specifically evasion at the time, but then nothing is until it is so ruled by HMRC and then the courts. Once that happens, what was not specifically evasion, merely very aggressive tax avoidance, becomes specifically so and the 20 year rule applies.

        2. Julian 8 Silver badge

          Re: Loan Charge?

          Remove that last comment, you have no idea who is watching and giving them ideas like that is the last thing we need

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Loan Charge?

          "How about government change speed limit now to 60mph, valid from 1999, and then issue penalty notices for everyone doing 70mph since?"

          Or worse -

          How about we increase the age of consent to 20... backdated to 1999

          (Sadly, I would remain on the 'right side' of this new law)

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Loan Charge?

        Can I just point out that anyone who has accepted cash in hand is guilty of tax evasion, a crime. Anyone has who has paid cash-in-hand in order to get some money off bears some moral responsibility for that. Those same people are happy to watch people being bankrupted for tax avoidance, a morally dubious action, but certainly not a crime.

        Since this saga started the government has passed laws allowing HMRC to demand sums under dispute up front, regardless of whether they are legitimate claims or not. Surprisingly, HMRC then seem to drag their heels for a few years, preventing the cases going to tribunal. When the supreme court determined that the employers were liable for the tax, the government simply changed the law to say employees were liable.

        The Government knew this was happening for many years and could have shut it down. Other countries have simple, general anti-avoidance laws where their revenue dept. can basically say “don’t be stupid that’s taxable”. This whole situation is unfair from everyone’s perspective, and you should spare some small measure of sympathy for those facing bankruptcy, because you could be next.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Stop doing scammy things then. "Yeah, I get paid a pound a year salary by my Caymans incorporated shell company, which then loans my umbrella company a £100k loan which then loans it to me in consideration for allowing it to use my brand and intellectual property etc"

      Just pay normal tax on everything you earn like the rest of us.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Ditto, mate.

      There's a sh*t-ton of us being hit, one way or another by our so-called Lords Of The Brown Window Envelope.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    She should now go back to the tribunal, for pension contributions, and a permanent contract without her pay being cut.

  3. ForthIsNotDead
    Thumb Down

    It's time...

    ...to seriously think about leaving the country.

    I'm serious. My wife and I are seriously thinking about it. It's got to the point where there is no incentive to run your own business anymore. In fact, if you do, you'll be PENALISED for it.

    It sounds like a form fascism (under the true, original definition) or communism to me.

    Fuck this place. I don't belong here any more.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's time...

      > ...to seriously think about leaving the country.

      Do it.

      I just left, the direction the UK is headed seems terrible in many ways. No need to go down with the ship.

    2. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: It's time...

      I did having seen how things were going generally, up until the point when I left 10 years ago.

      It wasn't easy, my ties to the UK are mostly non-existant these days & settled into my new country very quickly.

      1. matjaggard

        Re: It's time...

        I don't disagree with your opinion on the direction of the country as a whole but cutting down on unusual tax situations is absolutely reasonable. If you're an employee then use PAYE - contractors that are really employees are so common.

    3. Wilseus

      Re: It's time...

      "It's got to the point where there is no incentive to run your own business anymore. In fact, if you do, you'll be PENALISED for it."

      The thing that really gets me that this is under a "Conservative" government. I'd expect this sort of behaviour from Labour, not from the party that always used to champion free enterprise.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @RGE_Master Sorry to puncture your reality, you are not one of the common workers, they do PAYE, they do not setup a personal service company and pay tax as a company. I say this as a company of one who pays tax as I have indicated. It's purely a statement of fact, some of those who sit near you may probably be "common workers", albeit better paid than most of their common kind.

    I feel sorry for you having to go traveling for a year, as you leave please feel some empathy for the real "common workers" on min wage & zero hours who have problems funding a week or two in Spain.

    Thank you for your time RGE_Master, this slave will now get back to work.

    PS recent stories on here re offensive terms. Are you going to change your handle to RGE_primary or RGE_leader for some such?

    1. RGE_Master

      Why would I do that? RGE Stands for Resumé Generating event. I.E A f*ck up of biblical proportions which involve me updating my resumé.

      Never had to do that though

    2. Spazturtle Silver badge

      "the common workers, they do PAYE"

      "the real "common workers" on min wage & zero hours"

      These statements are contradictory, if the common worker is on a zero hours contract then they are not on PAYE. Companies love 'making people their own boss' because it means they don't need to pay any benefits or have accountants handle that persons PAYE tax return.

      1. Colin Bull 1
        Thumb Down

        "the real "common workers" on min wage & zero hours"

        These statements are contradictory, if the common worker is on a zero hours contract then they are not on PAYE.

        NOT TRUE. I would say that most zero hours worker ARE on PAYE. I certainly was for many years.

        Your employer or employers all have a tax code for you. Often you overpay tax -but get it refunded.

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "I say this as a company of one who pays tax as I have indicated."

      No you haven't indicated it. You're posting A/C so there's no indication of what your previous posts were.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I dislike envious people who moan at the good choices others have made, nothing stops you from contracting, except maybe your abilities, why complain about someone who is? Bitter jealousy!! I worked PAYE for decades hardly able to move forward due to excessive taxation and run away inflation, I now contract and get paid my worth in gold, take a running jump if this offends you!!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Do the right thing

    Pay your taxes, and make sure they are spent properly.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Do the right thing

      > ... and make sure they are spent properly.

      No-one seems to have managed that so far. What's your suggested approach?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Do the right thing

        "No-one seems to have managed that so far. What's your suggested approach?"

        Give your taxes to me. I will make sure that they are spent properly. Honestly, I will.

        Now, should I buy the Mclaren p1 or the Bugatti Veyron?

        1. LucreLout
          Joke

          Re: Do the right thing

          Give your taxes to me. I will make sure that they are spent properly. Honestly, I will.

          Now, should I buy the Mclaren p1 or the Bugatti Veyron?

          He's a contractor dude - his taxes wouldn't stretch to a Moggy Minor ;-)

    2. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Do the right thing

      When they suddenly increase taxes drastically and you don't get anything more to show for it, that doesn't seem great.

      "IR35-caught" broadly means you are not only taxed as an employee, but worse. You have to pay the employer's NI as well as employee NI, for instance. And you don't get sick/holiday pay plus can be dismissed without notice (in real terms, you're often on what is effectively a 0-hour contract).

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Do the right thing

        In general you're right but:

        "can be dismissed without notice (in real terms, you're often on what is effectively a 0-hour contract)."

        No, It's your company's contract that can be terminated without notice. It's this confusion between the individual and company that may be at the root of the entire problem and certainly enables HMRC to get away with it. The very first thing to do when going freelance is to get clear in your head what appertains to your company and what to you. The fees your company collects are not your income. They're the company's income. It can pay you a regular salary out of them and dividends at intervals, say half-yearly, but allowing the company to build up a reserve to allow salary to continue being paid when there are no engagements or you, the copmany's employee or off sick or on holiday.

        Just dumping the whole thing straight from the company's bank account into yours is just asking for trouble from HMRC.

        ISTR that Red Dawn's original justification for IR35 was to cut down on abuses such as zero-hours. Oddly enough they don't seem to be pursuing that with any great vigour. Could it be that they don't see great returns for effort?

        1. JDX Gold badge

          Re: In general you're right but:

          Um, no - I am a contractor working via a Ltd so I'm familiar with all this.

          Your contract CANNOT normally be terminated without notice. You generally have a 1-month notice period, or quite often there IS no notice period meaning you cannot give notice.

          BUT an IR35-compliant (if they still exist) contract often has a clause that they don't have to provide work and you don't have to do it. So in effect they can give your company 30 days notice but say "don't come in after today there's no work". And, typical contractors have a contract with their company, to supply them as a named individual.

          So that's why I say "EFFECTIVELY a 0-hours contract".

    3. Caver_Dave Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Do the right thing

      I was told by an accountant to "pay your taxes with a smile"

      I tried that but they insisted on sterling!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The people behind HMRC squeezing contractors...

    Will be very same to claim they can't get enough Tech workers in the UK.

    They'll draw all the wrong conclusions too. Probably blame it all on Brexit.

    Talk about self-inflicted wounds! Who actually thinks this is a good idea?

    A tax holiday / amnesty would be a better fix than bankrupting loans, no?

    1. matjaggard

      Re: The people behind HMRC squeezing contractors...

      That's not a self-inflicted wound. Having an arbitrary difference in taxation for those who can work out the paperwork to be paid via a company would be a wound to a fair economy.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        'Having an arbitrary difference in taxation for those who can work out the paperwork....'

        '....to be paid via a company would be a wound to a fair economy...'

        Cynical accountants at Facebook / Google / Apple / Amazon operating Double-Irish / Dutch-Sandwiches are probably falling around after reading that, with the hell SME's have to go through.

        Just a neutral observer but looking in from the outside, I'm amazed this change is coming in, at the very same time that UK officials are also claiming: "You see what it's like these days, Jack. You can't get the material.... To rob a quote from <Get Carter (1971)> that seems apt to describe the lack of available tech workers.

        UK officials still believe the only workable solution to the NI border Brexit issue is a technical one, yet tech expertise is leaving the country. That's a self-inflected wound dude...

  7. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    What you would hope for...

    What you would hope to happen is that someone at HMRC now wakes up after realizing that they have now lost two key (and highly visible) court cases in a row; and actually starts to think pragmatically about the pointlessness of IR35 and its complete failure to achieve any of what it set out to do all those many years ago.

    But the chances of that happening are zero because that's not the way civil servants think. If they do indeed think at all...

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: What you would hope for...

      "What you would hope to happen is that someone at HMRC now wakes up after realizing that they have now lost two key (and highly visible) court cases in a row"

      They've lost more than those. LimeIT was quite a spectacular loss as the inspector concerned issued a 2-page apology and still insisted he was right. But as they're mostly well spaced out they keep insisting they're right. It would take a whole series of failures to change that.

      A really spectacular change would be if they extend that to the private sector and a couple of private sector engagers get successfully sued for either benefits or, preferably, damages for an incorrect assessment. That would lead to out-of IR35 assessments, with supporting documentation, being the norm.

    2. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: What you would hope for...

      I think you'll find their intention is to push everything that comes under IR35 to make you taxable.

      In that they have succeeded in a number of ways - whether all these stories on here alone about "So I gave up and went properly employed" or otherwise, they are seeing a simpler tax structure and blanket taxation and more tax on an industry that they... well... were seeing less tax from before. And it's only cost them a small piece of admin and a couple of court cases for the borderlines.

      Pretty much, they got what they wanted. Is there anyone here paying LESS tax while subject to IR35 than they were before? At the very minimum, people have moved and made the taxation of them much simpler by being subject to PAYE.

      From a tax-collection-authority's point of view, I think it's a win all around. The man in the street doesn't really know or care, either. Accountants are quite happy to "take that off your hands" while handing the liability straight back to yourself too.

      Now, whether that's "fair" or whatever, that's an entirely different question. Whether you can *isolate* it to just looking at the "income from IR35" box on the national tax receipts or not is largely subjective. I would say that you can't. But tax receipts have grown every year except for 2008/9/10. IR35 came in in 2000, so you can't say that it's affected their overall receipts for the negative at all.

      IR35 is not there to "get money from IR35". It's there to discourage a particular way of working that can let you wheedle out of paying the tax that other methods don't. And it does that spectacularly well. Because people go out of their way to avoid being classed under IR35 if they can help it, and such "confusion" actually aids the process - people will say "I don't want to risk a huge backdated bill, so I'll make sure I'm nowhere near that". Bringing them into much more easily-taxable categories.

      It never set out to make money. It set out to stop people from avoiding giving them money. And it does just that. It just doesn't appear as a little box marked IR35 on the balance sheer. It manifests itself in overall better tax receipts. I wonder how many companies are registered differently, people moved to PAYE, etc. to avoid IE35? Only HMRC would really know.

      It's a deterrent law. And, judging by the comments here, it quite clearly works as everyone hates the mention of it and lots of people have stories of their money being demanded or held citing IR35. That's gonna scare off a lot of people.

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. magickmark
    Big Brother

    daja vu

    I had something like this happen to me about 11 years ago now.

    I was working as a self employed contractor with a number of clients (one of them being my accountant), paying my taxes, NI, etc.

    One of my clients was a local council, and I worked for them 2 to 3 days a week depending on what work needed to be done. No benefits at all (holidays, sick pay etc) but the tax man deemed I was employed by them so they had to start taxing me at source.

    In the meantime I was still being assessed as a self employed contractor and the income from that particular source was still included in the assessment. So essentially I was paying tax twice for the same income!

    My accountant did appeal it for me (and being a client/friend did not charge me to do so) but they maintained they were in the right.

    So it got to the point where I just had to stop working freelance as I just could not afford to carry on.

    So took a 'proper' job in the public sector and have been here ever since!

    Took me quite a few years to get myself financially stable again as well, the fuckers.

  9. Lost In Clouds of Data
    Holmes

    Way back when Labour was in last power...

    ...didn't the then-in-opposition Tory party state that they'd get rid of this Blair-Era tax rule as a pseudo campaign promise, or is my memory faulty?

    Granted I fecked off from blighty nigh on 20 years ago just before IR35 really kicked in, so I may misremembering all this.

  10. Sir Runcible Spoon
    Facepalm

    Obvious Prediction comes true

    https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/3012243 [Thursday 27th October 2016 09:49 GMT]

    "What I don't know is if I am somehow deemed to be an 'employee' and wotnot, does the company/agency I am working with have to pay their side of things too? (Such as pension contributions and holiday/sick pay etc.)."

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What they havn't realised

    is than certainly in the policy development parts of the uncivil service many "consultants" are called in for expertise and industrial guidance. Some are like IT contractors, some are semi or fully retired academics and engineers etc that simply turn up to meetings for a few weeks, write a report and disappear again. These are also not experts than you can procure just by going to "the market" they are THE experts...

    These guys are not going to take on masses of complexity in justifying their status, and the service does not have the budget to double their rates just to give money back to the treasury.

    This sort of carry on can have unintended consequences and not just the obsession they have with IT related contractors.

  12. SimonC

    People keep saying about leaving the UK but where will you go? Contractor software dev here, genuinely interested.

    Also regarding the comment about suddenly getting taxed as an employee but without the benefits, the case noted in the article means that isn't actually the case - HMRC said to the contractor (who was doing work for HMRC) that they're an employee and to pay tax as one, but didn't bother to give them the holiday pay. They took them to court and won.

    I'd laugh if they got pregnant and took a few months off on maternity leave. But I'm surprised the ordeal doesn't result in them signing off with 'stress' for a few months, all while HMRC has to continue to pay them since hey - they're an employee, right?

    Can you imagine hiring a plumber and then having the guy show up and sign off with stress for 2 months, during which you have to continue to pay him...

    1. Lost In Clouds of Data
      Go

      Guess I was one of the odd ones - I actually carried through with my internal threats and fucked off to annoy the bloody yanks instead. They've not kicked me out the country yet so either a) I'm doing something right or b) I need to ramp up my "annoying Brit" ''tude some more.

      On the plus side, there's now many an American co-worker who I've taught some new words and phrases to: No longer do I get blank stares when I say things like "I've got nowt", "I'll take a butchers" and "This project plan's a bit like going round the Wrekin, innit?"

      Naturally "Wanker", "Muppet" and "Tosser" are standard workplace vernacular as well...

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "On the plus side, there's now many an American co-worker who I've taught some new words and phrases to"

        Ah. Missionary work.

        1. Sir Runcible Spoon
          Headmaster

          @Lost In Clouds of Data

          Whilst I find your work laudable, did you have to teach them Northern?

          Ah, well, better than now't.

  13. aks

    HMRC are effectively being directed by the UK Government to wipe out most self-employed workers and force them to be employees (wage slaves).

  14. adam 40 Silver badge

    Contractor Wednesday

    Who was there in 1999 for "Contractor Wednesday"?

    I still remember meeting Andrew Lansley in the Lobby.

    Fat good it did though, I'm a permie now.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rules Please

    Any chance of getting some hard and fast rules around this shit? Maybe telling people how to frame their working practices is a bit beyond the super-brains ruling us so, so well.

    After three decades of coding on projects for over 40 big UK clients and helping to deliver massive, global cash cows to those UK companies (are you listening Chancellor fuck wit?) I'm applying to work down under.

    At least the weather will be nice and I believe they are looking for Java devs with 30 years experience - hopefully my age isn't a problem, but the loot I will remove from the UK should ease their concerns.

    Anon for obvious reasons, but I'm really not the only one planning their exit from Blighty. Kids are grown and flown, mortgage is done and dusted so up, up and away!

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