Just before Christmas, three Court of Appeal judges ruled that the measure did not fall foul of European law. Rather than accepting this was the end of the road as some pessimistic observers predicted, PCG’s chairman Jane Akshar stood on the steps of the Royal Court of Justice and immediately announced this was the launch pad for the next stage of the campaign – case law.

PCG will select and fund individual legal test cases to ensure that the tests used to determine employment or self-employment status catch up with the 21st century way of being in business. So no longer will IT programmers, engineers and other knowledge businesses have to use tests more suited to cobblers…

In three years time, the PCG predicts that the strides it makes in driving case law forward and the information it makes available will make IR35 a voluntary tax for its members. With people like tax experts Anne Redston and Kevin Miller on the case I reckon they have the best team in place. So I have paid £1000 towards the cash target to fund this. Only another £499,000 needed (I reckon £500,000 would be a nice round figure).

However, the same ‘can do, stuff you’ attitude which led to the formation of the PCG three years ago, has meant that its members refuse to be counted out before the bell has rung and write off any of their options. Most so-called legal experts who are watching the judicial review case from the ring-side dismissed PCG’s chances in delivering the legal knock-out blow. But these are the same people whose understanding of the mentality of contractors, is on a par with my personal experience of moon-walking.

If you were a betting man, you would probably not want to put your shirt on the PCG winning in the House of Lords or the European Court. But it has now gone beyond a knock-out blow. PCG will defeat IR35 either through the certainty of case law or the chance of the judicial review. This is not about the manner of defeat, it is now about the attitude of PCG members, who want to send a message to the Government that IR35 is as wrong now as it was three years ago.

Because of this strength of feeling, the PCG membership has demanded it take it to the wire. It has re-opened its funds appeal. The first £350,000 pledge will go towards establishing the case law - the second £350,000 pledged by members will be used to appeal the Court of Appeal decision, all the way to Europe if necessary.

I personally have no idea what the chances are of winning in Europe. I glaze over every time I hear the phrase ‘state aid’ or ‘freedom of movement’ and in my view, lawyers are on a par with dentists in terms of people I’d like to do business with. For all I understand of the legal arguments, a three-legged donkey could have a better chance of winning the Grand National than we have of overturning UK tax law in Luxembourg.

And therefore I have pledged a further £10,000 to continue this fight against IR35.

This is about sending a message. IR35 is unfair, unjust and wrong. It singles out a section of the population and says ‘you are a tax cheat, you’ve got no right to run a business, leave it to the big companies’.

The members of PCG did more than talk about the injustice of it - they formed a group, put their hands in their pockets and sent a message to the Government saying ‘we’re not going to take this, we’re going to do more about it than moan, you’ve got a fight on your hands and we’re not going away’.

These people aren’t rolling over and paying this unfair tax. They are continuing to fight for themselves - and the other contractors who, to date have only, talked about the injustice of it - and they will fight with every tool available.

Anyone closely associated with PCG knows that the Group will win – either through a knock-out blow under European law; or death by a thousand cuts (or more likely half a dozen solid cases) will re-write case law to make it relevant to the contracting section; or through using the information, contracts and mutual support offered within PCG to show members how to work outside IR35; or through a continuing education process of clients and agents to change their attitude to business-to-business agreements.

More than 14,000 individuals want to take responsibility for their own futures - or at least go down trying. Shout99 got its name from the team cry used by Lions rugby captain Willie John McBride in the tour of South Africa in 1974. Faced with a hostile and aggressive South African team playing in front of their home crowd, McBride introduced a code-word of 99 - any Lion in trouble shouted ‘99’ and that was the cue for the rest of the team to ‘deck’ the nearest opponent. It sent a message loud and clear – you might be bigger, stronger, tougher and the odds might be stacked against us - but we’re not going to take it lying down. The Lions won.

PCG members are sending that message. It is contractors’ own organisation, they are funding and controlling their actions, they are influencing their own future - they are not prepared to lie down and take it from a Government who has got it wrong.

Other contractors who also want to send a message to the Government that they are prepared to do something about their own future and not be a sitting target and a passive victim for an unfair law, can join the PCG and pledge to fight.

When I launched PCG in 1999, we used a favourite quotation of mine in response to those who criticised us for even trying. It is still true today of the attitude of PCG members.

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who knows great enthusiasm, great devotion and the triumph of achievement and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while doing greatly - so that his place shall never be with those cold timid souls who know neither victory or defeat....

Over to you now, I have said my bit, and I look forward to meeting many of you at the PCG’s IR35 Toolkit seminar on January 24, 2002, in London, run in conjunction with Shout99.

These seminars provide contractors with information and resources to tackle IR35 *here and now*. And for anyone who attends who does not feel they are value for money, I’ll have my chequebook out again and will refund their attendance fee on the night.

Cheers

Andy White

join the PCG:

To contribute to the legal fund
*You must be a PCG member*
£350,000 in cash and £350,000 in pledges MINIMUM and by 20th Jan LATEST.

To register for the IR35 Toolkit seminar
PCG members get a £50 discount

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The Editor