Clarification Or Confusion?

IN HER BOOK Employed or self-employed Professor Judith Freedman of Oxford University noted that with regard to the confusion between employment and self-employment:

'IR56 would be unlikely to help much with that confusion in anything other than a reasonably clear case … it is inadequate for those at the borderline the very people who particularly need assistance.'

Early in 2004 tax experts learned that the Revenue was revising its leaflet IR56 Employed or self-employed? A guide to employment status for tax and National Insurance contributions and they would have hoped that the revised guidance would address the many problems that the old IR56 contained.

This article looks at those problems and considers whether the new guidance meets the needs of the increasing numbers of taxpayers trying to operate in the brave new world of self employment.

The need...