Q. My agency is demanding that I send them personal details like my NI number. Should I be concerned?
A. Agencies now have to provide quarterly reports to HMRC on all workers who are self-employed for tax and NI purposes. This will include sole traders, limited companies and external umbrella workers.
This forms part of the Onshore Intermediaries Legislation, which seeks to target false self-employment through agencies. The legislation is ostensibly aimed at self-employed sole traders, i.e. those working in construction, but limited company contracts are being partially caught in the crossfire.
The legislation itself should not apply to limited company contractors – just the reporting requirements. In terms of the data that HMRC receive from agencies, there is an argument that they may look to use it to target people for IR35 enquiries. Whether or not this happens remains to be seen.
Our advice would be to provide the relevant details to the agency. It will not have a direct impact on your IR35 status and the agency will get heavily penalised if they do not report accurately to HMRC.
This answer was provided by Qdos Contractor.
If anyone thinks this has anything to do with the building trade or self employed labourers then think again.
This is purely and simply a back door snitch exercise to cross reference VAT, payments to Ltds, personal tax returns and force people through fright to reduce legitimate expenses.
All driven out of the huge earners like the BBC news readers whose 7 figure salaries are disguised through artificial Ltds when they should be PAYE.
This is not the same as a genuine contractor, taking business risk but not making enough to afford to pay top notch accountancy experts tens of thousands of pounds to find loopholes in tax law.