Ahead of the publication of the official minutes of the meeting of the IR35 Forum last week, Contractor Weekly understands that a new and improved system for IR35 administration will undergo a 12 month pilot from 6th April 2012.
It is believed that the pilot will take the form of an ‘IR35 interventions programme’ and will be finalised at the last meeting of the IR35 Forum that is due to take place on 8th March. The Forum will also affirm the IR35 scenarios which contractors will be able to refer to help them self-assess their IR35 status, i.e. high, medium or low.
The IR35 Forum was created last year, tasked with providing advice on how to best improve the legislation. It is chaired by HMRC and made up of various individuals with experience in the industry.
Until the mechanics of the improved IR35 administration are known, freelancers should continue to review their IR35 status for each contract and it is likely that this will continue to be the case so as to compliment the risk assessing process.
Discuss how you would like to see IR35 changed in the Contractor Weekly Forum.
The very last thing we need is a test that results in Low, Medium, High risk of being caught. That’s even worse than the current IR35 tests.
We need a test which is a sequence of questions of which the answers are either ye or no or a numerical value. And then those answers can be combined to determine WITHOUT DOUBT what my status is, or what my contract’s status is.
The entire problem of IR35 is the fact that we cannot clearly work out the status of a given contract.
I agree entirely. Just to know either way would remove all these if’s and but’s. Everything else to do with accounting my company is cut and dry why can’t this be.
Current IR35 tests result in 99.95% chance of being found outside.
New tests will be designed by Hector to improve that total in their favour, not to give contractors peace of mind.
All I want is to be able to work out if a contract is in or out of IR35. NOT if it is a low, medium or high chance of it. That is utterly useless information
More half-arsed attempts to try and make this stupid piece of legislation usable. I find it utterly incomprehesible that 12 years after it’s introduction we are still left with a piece of legislation that the only true way to know whether a contract is inside or outside of IR35 is by legal review of individual contract.
Surely for those contractors electing to go inside IR35 there should be a recripical arrangement where overpaid tax is able to be re-claimed, through contract appraisal? perhaps this is the only real way this clown piece of legislation will ever get resolved.
If I were HMRC or a politician involved in this farce I would hang my head in shame at this woeful state of affairs.
I guess I cannot be alone in wondering if this nonsence will ever cease.
On the plus side, a series of scenarios that allow my company to assess the risk will be useful. Would anyone like to take a bet that Hector will use this as a chance to clarify his position and improve the chances of or remove some of the costly failed procecutions by the highway robbers in the HMRC…