Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices

Discussion since publication of the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices has continued on how best to tackle the taxation of various categories of ‘worker’ in what has become known as the ‘gig economy’. Although it would be helpful to determine once and for all the true employment status of people working in this environment alignment of the tax rules with employment law seems not to be a nettle that anyone is prepared to grasp. In the absence of addressing those issues the debate appears to have moved to how best to collect tax from those working in the murky middle ground.

The latest contribution to this debate is the Office of Tax Simplification’s paper  Platforms the Platform Economy and Tax Simplification. This suggests that a form of PAYE mechanism might be applied to self-employed people who use online platforms to source work. How...