Rojgar Job News

Here is another question from our IR35 webinar the other week. Given what I have read about CEST supposedly being rigged in favour of HMRC, is it worth using for my PSC assessments? If you google HMRC’s Checking Employment Status for Tax (CEST) tool, right back at you will come a substantial number of articles criticising different aspects of it. It is biased, incomplete, unreliable, they say. It contains no questions about mutuality of obligation even though that is a fundamental indicator of status for employment rights purposes. It is unable to give a view at all in about 1 in 6 cases and its questions seek black or white answers to which the real facts are rarely susceptible. There are suggestions that CEST’s development took place in artificial workshop surroundings only, and that this is why in some cases it reaches conclusions different from the judges who heard the facts in real life. A freedom of information request has apparently confirmed that CEST was never even ...

Over 240 people signed up for our IR35 webinar last Thursday.   I would love to see this as a long-overdue recognition of my presentation skills, but fear instead that it just reflects widespread and continuing uncertainty among end-users about how new IR35 will work in practice. Our latest information is that the draft legislation will be published on 11 July, slightly sooner than expected. Unless picking the dry bones out of tax statutes is your thing, we would normally suggest waiting for the clarificatory guidance. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to be (a) issued more than a couple of months before D-Day in April next year; and (b) very clarificatory – unfortunately these changes will operate in part by fear, especially if it becomes a strict liability failure, and too much clarity would militate against this. That will have the obviously wholly unintended side-effect of extending IR35’s (and so HMRC’s) effective territorial waters way beyond the point po...

Last month the government published both the results of its latest consultation on IR35 and the draft legislation. So with time to digest, any surprises? No, not really. But we now have some greater degree of certainty as to how the new rules will apply. Here are some key points: Is it definitely happening? Anyone who still nurtured a lingering hope that a government in difficulty enough on so many other counts might change its mind on this one will be disappointed. The private sector will be brought into line with the public sector with effect from 6 April 2020. The changes will apply to payments made from that date, meaning that it will be relevant to pre-existing contracts as well as new ones. In other words, end-user clients will need to determine whether IR35 applies to any of their existing contractors as at 6 April 2020 as well as any new ones taken on after that date. If you want to amend your contracts and/or PSC contractor practices, therefore, now is your moment. IR35 status...

Ready for IR35 in three months’ time? Nor is almost anyone else, it seems. But is it now too late to do anything about it, or can you still take meaningful steps, even at this advanced stage, to protect your IR35 position? There is good news and bad on this. The bad news is the Government’s newly-announced review of how IR35 will operate in the private sector. The very most that we might expect out of this is some mildly tweaked guidance. Bear in mind that the review will last scarcely a month and that it will conclude only weeks before the 6 April implementation date. Consider also that it will reportedly include consultation with representative stakeholders plus a fresh look at the HMRC’s online CEST tool and analysis of how the same reform went down in the public sector in 2017. All immensely sensible in principle, obviously, but equally all things which could and should have been done at least a year ago if the Government were genuinely interested in the outcome. C...