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Newsletter 387: IR35 Forum 'locked in disagreement' over tests
by Newsletter Editor at 10:15 05/04/12 ( Shout99 Newsletter)
Freelancers must feel that with IR35 it is one step forward and two steps back. Some of the greyness of IR35 was meant to be removed this month with the publication of a series of tests bringing clarity to contractors and allowing them to assess their risk of a Revenue challenge. However, the tests themselves are now proving to add more controversy to an already controversial subject.
The IR35 Forum, including freelancer trade group the PCG, devised, approved and agreed the specific tests which gives freelancers a 'high', 'medium' or 'low' risk of an IR35 challenge. But the PCG has now described the questions as 'insufficient' and says they are 'locked in disagreement with the Revenue over the scoring of the tests'.

And with just days before the tests are published, the PCG has warned that: "Unless the Revenue change their stance on the scoring, PCG and other Forum members will not be able to support the Business Tests."

So after more than 12 months, half a dozen meetings and considerable drafting and re-drafting, the exercise which was meant to bring clarity to contractors is still bogged down in dispute and disagreement.

It begs the question that if some of the most clued-up IR35 practitioners and HMRC's senior IR35 staff can't agree a series of a dozen questions and answers to help a contractor assess the risk of an IR35 investigation, what hope for a contractor trying to assess his or her actual status!

IR35 Forum 'locked in disagreement'

IR35 Forum: Risk checker available in April

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Susie Hughes, Editor
Newsletter 387
Shout99 - the network for freelancers
www.shout99.com

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