Following the publication of the Business Entity tests and six IR35 scenarios last week, HMRC has come under fire for not delivering the certainty to contractors that it had promised and that everyone had hoped for. Some of that criticism is justified especially in respect of the example scenarios.

The scenarios, which can be found on the HMRC Legislation Guide (PDF) , have been developed to illustrate when and why IR35 will apply to an engagement and when and why it will not. There are six in total, two outside of IR35, one within IR35, one borderline, one in and outside of IR35 and one where the main contract is within IR35. Unfortunately there is nothing new contained within these scenarios that contractors will not have already seen or known about.

HMRC claims it is on target to meet its objectives to provide a better service and has made a Joint Understanding Agents Project statement outlining its progress in this area.

Around 3.5 million taxpayers are due to be informed by HMRC that they have paid too much tax which will result in an average refund of £379 each.

A recent First Tier Tax Tribunal case involved one of those rare occurrences of HMRC arguing strongly that a taxpayer should be treated as self-employed and not employed as the individual had claimed.

This week has seen the publishing of the new 'business entity' test by HMRC. These tests and the IR35 operational approach was the subject of discussion at a meeting of IR35 specialists from both profession and industry, and HMRC, held yesterday, which Andy Vessey was a participant.

None of the questions really come as any great surprise and are variations/expansions on well known historical themes. It is, however, the allocation of points to some of the answers to these questions that do appear imbalanced.