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Readers will recall that after the Growth Plan (which now seems like ancient history) we published two articles giving different views on the scrapping of the off-payroll rules reform. Indeed we were offered a third last week which, wisely as it turned out, I suggested we should hold back on for the moment. Now, of course, the proposal has been scrapped and, as far as anybody knows, we are back where we were in the summer.
The chancellor has managed to please nobody by doing this. The contractor community had largely welcomed the abolition of the reforms and is understandably frustrated (to put it mildly) by the U-turn. End users will still have to operate rules which they find onerous and remain concerned about the impact on the supply chain.
Everybody agrees that we can’t simply put back the clock and pretend that all is well. Employment status and, in particular, the position of personal service companies (PSCs) really needs sorting out once and for all. I must confess that I find the whole idea of PSCs perplexing. Should changing my red waistcoat of self-employment to my yellow waistcoat of a PSC really have such a dramatic effect on my employment and tax status? That’s how the system works at the moment and people have every right to a PSC if it meets their needs. But I suspect that if it were not for the current tax and employment law rules, far fewer people would feel the need to operate through PSCs. So should any review think the unthinkable and at least question the premise that PSCs are an integral and inevitable part of the landscape?
I’ll start to duck now to avoid the brickbats which I fear will be coming my way…
If you do one thing…
Review the updates to the trust registration reporting requirements (tinyurl.com/hmrctrsmoct).
