Becoming a contractor and IR35

notanewuser

jaketownsend wrote: »

I follow IR35 quite closely, especially since the advent of the 'IR35 business entity test'...

Not sure if they're trying to drum up trade, but this piece on 'Lawspeed' today suggests that an upcoming change to the IR35 rules to do with office holders may be of some concern...

I'm not allowed to post links as a new user, but its on the RHS of Lawspeed (dot) com - Overview of a seminar, perhaps an old time could post the URL.

"It became clear that the application of IR35 will be significantly extended by the proposed legislation, even though the government implies that the changes are only minor."

Any IR35 experts have any views on this?

Thanks Jake

Linky

http://www.lawspeed.com/News/Overview_Lawspeed_Seminar_─_“IR35_Unplugged”.aspx

chrismac1

The first thing to be clear about is that this is proposed legislation, not law. As a related example, new Labour completely bottled their proposed legislation on "husband and wife companies" when some unintended consequences were spelled out to them.

In my opinion none of my clients who are at risk from IR35 will have an increased risk due to the "office holder" element. This was brought in following the high profile cases involving executive directors of public bodies such as the BBC.

Personally I have always advised clients not to get involved in the organisational structure in any way. For example, one was asked to become the safety rep. in his project team for an area covering about 50 staff. I told him it was nice to be asked but was it worth a greatly increased risk of an extra £8k per year in tax?

He declined this exciting opportunity to be a safety rep. and the ultimate customer trained someone else up.