:tories: Tories in trouble?

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I’m thinking

I’ve been saying it for years - he is corrupt and I have no idea why he’s not been been questioned about before now.

Because he’s the latest Tory housewife’s favourite - oh, and the fact his ethic background makes him Teflon against any adverse comments maybe?*

*pure speculation obvs.

TBF I don’t think that is strictly true

A succession of chancellors have been turning the screw on this for years - it’s a bullshit piece of legislation that has been terribly implemented with zero thought about the actual root causes ie the definition of a worker and the definition of self employed

Govts of every hue have got it wrong

Novara did a great job on this last night.

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I’ve just been reading that Sunak grew up in Southampton and is an avid Saints fan and season ticket holder, you learn something new every day. Now we know who Life in the Slowlane is ligging with in the director’s box bar after matches!

Although it could be bullshit, an attempt to portray himself as a man of the people as I also read that he’s never been seen at St Marys. A bit like pretending that he drives a Kia Rio, having a photo shoot at a Sainsbury’s petrol station with one that he borrowed from a Sainsbury’s worker. These charlatans really do take us for mugs, I suppose you can’t blame them really, so many desperate to swallow the crap. Like taking candy from a baby sadly.

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His family ran Sunak’s chemist at the top of Hill Lane.

He’s been trying to lig with me I’ll have you know but I won’t have it. I told him he had to have a better background than a Burgess Road chemists to join my gang. :rage:

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The problem is that he changed the onus to the business to decide the way that a contractor should be engaged. This results in far more Inside IR35 determinations, and that is not a situation that many contractors want to work under as it means they cannot claim expenses and obviously have to work paying PAYE - which is more expensive for the Contractor and the Business.

The net result is more Contractors have left the market, and companies are starting to bring in Consultancies to fill those gaps.

And guess what Infosys do…

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I like these guys - never watched them before. Seem very measured.

Whilst I appreciate that companies will take a more cautious view, this does suggest that when left to their own devices contractors take the piss

As for it being Rishis fault, this has been coming down the pipe way before he got his hands on the tiller

It’s not contractors taking the piss by any extent. I’m sure some do, the same as some people cheat benefits, and some people use cronyism to sell Government contracts to their mates, but in reality it is a small percentage.

The issue with contracting is how do you tax them fairly when they have the following issues:

  • No holiday
  • No sick pay
  • No pensions
  • No healthcare
  • 2 week notice periods (vs 3 months)
  • No redundancy rights
  • No employment rights

What percentage uplift on a salary should this be worth? With the uncertainty, and the fact that a contractor can be unemployed for large amounts of time, I would say its pretty much a 100% uplift needed on salary.

A lot of the time these contractors work away from home all week, but now can’t expense hotels and mileage, so the workforce has become immobile.

With inside IR35 the contractor now has to pay:

  • ERS National insurance
  • EES National insurance
  • Apprentice Levy
  • ERS Pension
  • EES Pension

before being taxed fully via PAYE.

To make up for the tax difference between inside and outside IR35 you need a 20% uplift on day rate. Businesses are not doing that, as some can’t afford to, and some don’t want to. Contractors also don’t want to work for less, due to the massive risks they are taking.

All that happens is that businesses start using consultancies, who are pretty much agency workers. This is where the huge conflict of interests falls.

And don’t forget how the Chancellor treated contractors during COVID. He’s a massive, corrupt, cunt that wants to kill of contractors.

IMHO, of course.

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Got a call from my accountant telling me that HMRC have decided they are running managed service companies and that I might have to pay more tax for 2017/18. The accountant is appealing as they don’t own shares in any of the companies.

I agree with you. Never the same as employment. No security whatsoever - with the only way you stay alive is to be fit and able to produce good work.

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And, with IT contractors, this is few and far between

I’ve definitely met some characters.

One bloke had the nickname of ā€œthe ticket toucherā€. His name pop up on every ticket, with some meaningless contribution which did not solve the issue.

He liked to spend his Sundays sitting in the back of his car, reading the newspapers and smoking cigars, while his wife sat in the front driving him about.

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Having a business placing contractors - I would say that 80% of contractors who claimed to be outside IR35, would fail the supervision, direction and control tests

Most were in it to save tax - pure and simple.

You mentioned all those benefits that you didn’t get - they obviously weren’t worth as much as the tax you saved because you are pissed off that HMRC has finally managed to knacker the lark.

To be honest, it sounds like your company were not doing their due diligence well enough - my determinations were always done in conjunction with the end client. It would be unwise to do otherwise.

In relation I was working outside before, and the tax saving was part of the ability to counteract the lost benefits. That’s the point I was making above.

I would definitely not work inside for the same day rate which is what I was requested to do - the extra money doesn’t outweigh the benefits, that’s for sure. It’s why I went permanent.

Funnily enough when speaking to HR about it, they were 100% sure that my status as a contractor was Outside IR35, but as a FTSE100 company didn’t want to get into legal wranglings with HMRC because of potential ā€œadverseā€ publicity, and so put everyone Inside.

Just out of interest, when you say the control, supervision and direction tests, are these from CEST (which HMRC doesn’t even use to determine inside and outside)?

My biggest issue with the whole thing is that you cannot have a Chancellor leading disruptive legislation that gives an advantage to a company that his wife has a stake in. You just cannot do that.

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I’m the agency in the middle - I had no input into the contractors determination of their own IR35 status.

As for supervision direction and control - this is based upon the ā€œbadges of tradeā€ which the HMRC have historically used. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the ā€œbadgesā€ - there is a fuck load wrong with how they are applied in the CEST. You say that HMRC doesnt use it, however they do respect its result (providing you haven’t negligently completed it)

I have been watching the evolution of this legislation over the last 20 years. back in the day, particularly with the advent of the Umbrella companies, the piss taking was on an industrial scale - I saw examples of teaching assistants claiming to be self employed

They may have got away with it had the industry not got greedy and started coming up with even more aggressive tax avoidance schemes - being employed from Guernsey to dodge employers NI or director loans

Two more Government departments are facing combined additional tax bills of at least Ā£120 million due to incorrectly determining the status of their contractors, despite following HMRC’s guidance and using HMRC’s Check Employment Status for Tax (CEST) tool.