Contractors: IR35 & general discussion

[Countdown]

Lord Marylebone said:

Indeed. That is why I said ‘make of that what you will’

I’m only guessing, but I assume that they feel you can’t possibly be compared to an employee of theirs if you work for others at the same time as you work for them, as that would never be the case if you were an employee.

It would be an odd assumption. I have two roles that are both PAYE.. My daughter also has two jobs (one during the week, another at weekends)

[wombleh]

Perhaps they just use it to weight the overall score, not a definitive thing on it’s own but lends to the overall picture.

Good that they’ve actually published something though, my last client still hasn’t said anything other than “something is changing and we don’t know what” while informally telling everyone they’re inside. I get the impression they think they can wait until April to do anything, suspect we might be reading about them in the news at that point!

[Clockwork Cupcake]

I'm holding off broaching the subject with my main client for now since we haven't heard the result of the review yet. Although I don't have a lot of hope of the House of Lords doing anything other than rubber-stamping what the Commons have told them to do.

[Gazzab]

worsy said:

Bluedot said:

Gazzab said:

Has anyone had a good look at the various umbrella co’s? I need to urgently choose one but it seems like there are tons of questions to consider.
The client says I should choose from one of the following. Has anyone looked at the costs and benefits / disbenefits of any of these ones?
Brookson
JSA
Giant
Fore two
NASA
Orange Genie
Parasol
Paystream My Max
Umbrella-company

I tried starting an umbrella thread over here
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

not much interest though if I'm honest

https://www.contractoruk.com/forums/umbrella-companies/

Thanks. There are a few useful threads there. Pay stream seems a popular choice. Giant not so popular.

[Anubis]

The new chancellor speaking about IR35.

Nothing is changing so be prepared for it in April.

[hyphen]

Anubis said:

The new chancellor speaking about IR35.

Nothing is changing so be prepared for it in April.

chancellor said:

Review is being published soon, and there will be tweaks and improvements

I have spoken with HMRC to ensure they won't be heavy handed in the first year

So potentially a few positive changes.

IR35 change was never going to get cancelled- we cant have disguised employee, contractors at same client for many years! Anyone thinking it can be stopped is dreaming.

[anonymous-user]

hyphen said:

So potentially a few positive changes.

IR35 change was never going to get cancelled- we cant have disguised employee, contractors at same client for many years! Anyone thinking it can be stopped is dreaming.

To be honest, it’s those people who ruined it for everyone.

I know a few people who work in the IT and the nuclear industry who have been doing the same job for 10-15 years, at the same desk, Monday to Friday, with the same company, yet apparently they are a limited company ‘contracting to that business’.

They were normal employees who said to their employer “Do you mind if I make myself a ltd company for the same monthly cost and I’ll just carry on working here?”

It’s an absolute piss take.

I’m in a few big WhatsApp chat groups where some of them are talking about it and saying “oh well, got away with it for 14 years at least, now I’ll just go back permanent”

They were employees, no two ways about it.

Their terrific plan to pay less tax has now resulted in people like me, who genuinely do work short term projects for multiple varied clients at once, and have no idea where their jobs next month are coming from, potentially suffer.

It was absolutely no surprise that this couldn’t carry on.

Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 23 February 11:04

[hyphen]

Lord Marylebone said:

Their terrific plan to pay less tax has now resulted in people like me, who genuinely do work short term projects for multiple varied clients at once, and have no idea where their jobs next month are coming from, potentially suffer.

The government could have properly address the situation by putting limits on how long you could work for one sole client, inability to move projects for same client more than X times and so on.

But would have been too much work for them to ensure no loopholes were left behind as tax Dodgers will always take the piss with some harebrained scheme.

[Gazzab]

hyphen said:

Lord Marylebone said:

Their terrific plan to pay less tax has now resulted in people like me, who genuinely do work short term projects for multiple varied clients at once, and have no idea where their jobs next month are coming from, potentially suffer.

The government could have properly address the situation by putting limits on how long you could work for one sole client, inability to move projects for same client more than X times and so on.

But would have been too much work for them to ensure no loopholes were left behind as tax Dodgers will always take the piss with some harebrained scheme.

Am sure a simpler CEST tool that considered the length of engagement eg ‘you’ve tipped over 2 years’ (or whatever) would have been easy to implement and would have meant that the banks etc would have been less likely to implement a total ban on Psc’s.

[aeropilot]

Gazzab said:

hyphen said:

Lord Marylebone said:

Their terrific plan to pay less tax has now resulted in people like me, who genuinely do work short term projects for multiple varied clients at once, and have no idea where their jobs next month are coming from, potentially suffer.

The government could have properly address the situation by putting limits on how long you could work for one sole client, inability to move projects for same client more than X times and so on.

But would have been too much work for them to ensure no loopholes were left behind as tax Dodgers will always take the piss with some harebrained scheme.

Am sure a simpler CEST tool that considered the length of engagement eg ‘you’ve tipped over 2 years’ (or whatever) would have been easy to implement and would have meant that the banks etc would have been less likely to implement a total ban on Psc’s.

The problem is in some industries, 2 years is too short.
In mine, 5+ years for site based project duration isn't uncommon, and so project knowledge, especially at the end when trying to provide handover documentation and as-built information is very important to the ultimate end client.
This is the problem with a one-size fits all Govt mentality to such a wide variety of industries and situations.

[anonymous-user]

Gazzab said:

hyphen said:

Lord Marylebone said:

Their terrific plan to pay less tax has now resulted in people like me, who genuinely do work short term projects for multiple varied clients at once, and have no idea where their jobs next month are coming from, potentially suffer.

The government could have properly address the situation by putting limits on how long you could work for one sole client, inability to move projects for same client more than X times and so on.

But would have been too much work for them to ensure no loopholes were left behind as tax Dodgers will always take the piss with some harebrained scheme.

Am sure a simpler CEST tool that considered the length of engagement eg ‘you’ve tipped over 2 years’ (or whatever) would have been easy to implement and would have meant that the banks etc would have been less likely to implement a total ban on Psc’s.

I agree with both of you.

There have been piss-takers, yet there was surely a simpler way to do all this.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

We already have a 24 month rule on claiming traveling expenses, so there is already precedent for duration-based rules. This could have been expanded upon.

However, I'm not convinced it's valid. If you have outsourced part of your business to another, and both parties are happy, then I don't see why that shouldn't continue indefinitely.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

Lord Marylebone said:

yet there was surely a simpler way to do all this.

This is HMRC we're talking about. When has any change in taxation, even changes purported to simplify taxation, actually made tax simpler?

[aeropilot]

Lord Marylebone said:

yet there was surely a simpler way to do all this.

Of course there was.............

But that's not the Govt way.

[markyb_lcy]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

We already have a 24 month rule on claiming traveling expenses, so there is already precedent for duration-based rules. This could have been expanded upon.

However, I'm not convinced it's valid. If you have outsourced part of your business to another, and both parties are happy, then I don't see why that shouldn't continue indefinitely.

Indeed, and it might raise questions about the minimal closed group of big consultancy businesses that get all the main government contracts over and over. Yes, they are not PSCs but why should it be any different in the context of duration-based limits.

[anonymous-user]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

Lord Marylebone said:

yet there was surely a simpler way to do all this.

This is HMRC we're talking about. When has any change in taxation, even changes purported to simplify taxation, actually made tax simpler?

Absolutely.

aeropilot said:

Of course there was.............

But that's not the Govt way.

Absolutely, again.

[wombleh]

aeropilot said:

The problem is in some industries, 2 years is too short.
In mine, 5+ years for site based project duration isn't uncommon, and so project knowledge, especially at the end when trying to provide handover documentation and as-built information is very important to the ultimate end client.
This is the problem with a one-size fits all Govt mentality to such a wide variety of industries and situations.

I was on one project that ran about 15 years in energy sector, run by contractors.

I personally think the company should just create a permanent project team for that sort of setup. They could give the staff a payoff at the end or bench them for a few months while they find something else to use them on. Would barely be a rounding error on the budget for a lot of engineering projects.

[Countdown]

wombleh said:

aeropilot said:

The problem is in some industries, 2 years is too short.
In mine, 5+ years for site based project duration isn't uncommon, and so project knowledge, especially at the end when trying to provide handover documentation and as-built information is very important to the ultimate end client.
This is the problem with a one-size fits all Govt mentality to such a wide variety of industries and situations.

I was on one project that ran about 15 years in energy sector, run by contractors.

I personally think the company should just create a permanent project team for that sort of setup. They could give the staff a payoff at the end or bench them for a few months while they find something else to use them on. Would barely be a rounding error on the budget for a lot of engineering projects.

If they need you for so long why not take you on as permanent staff?

ps Lots of companies do have permanent project teams.

[aeropilot]

wombleh said:

aeropilot said:

The problem is in some industries, 2 years is too short.
In mine, 5+ years for site based project duration isn't uncommon, and so project knowledge, especially at the end when trying to provide handover documentation and as-built information is very important to the ultimate end client.
This is the problem with a one-size fits all Govt mentality to such a wide variety of industries and situations.

I was on one project that ran about 15 years in energy sector, run by contractors.

I personally think the company should just create a permanent project team for that sort of setup. They could give the staff a payoff at the end or bench them for a few months while they find something else to use them on.

If only it works like that in real life.
The problem is specialist experience, as permie's simply don't want to spend that amount of time on a project to gain such experience, as by default they want to move around to climb the career ladder, or the high level management decide to move someone to do something else.
The problem with permie staff is company politics and HR departments. The ones that are good and/or suck up to the right people don't hang around long enough to be of long term use (or go contract ) which just leaves the dregs......

[wombleh]

aeropilot said:

If only it works like that in real life.
The problem is specialist experience, as permie's simply don't want to spend that amount of time on a project to gain such experience, as by default they want to move around to climb the career ladder, or the high level management decide to move someone to do something else.
The problem with permie staff is company politics and HR departments. The ones that are good and/or suck up to the right people don't hang around long enough to be of long term use (or go contract ) which just leaves the dregs......

I’ve seen it happen for reasons of corporate accounting. We don’t want head count but it’s fine to run contractors for decades because they sit in a different column on the spreadsheet.

I interviewed with an engineering consultancy recently who had mainly perms that they sent to clients for projects, they had some excellent people and looked after them, so it can be done.