At the height of the millennium bug scare (1999, kids etc.), pretty much anyone who could switch on a computer became an IT contractor and earned a fortune. Gordon Brown decided that declaring these supposedly self-employed persons to be employed could raise a fortune in tax. The new rule, IR35 proved too complex and expensive to implement and actually raised around 1% of what was expected. But here we go again, another chancellor thinks he sees another soft target and, of course, knows better. And will come another cropper, I’d say.
“HMRC scraps plans to tax pensions after death”
A couple of other Statement Highlights (in my world, anyway). A welcome ‘nothing happened’ on the treatment of pensions on death. They were never going to be liable to IHT (too complicated with trusts and trust law) but there was talk of making them income-taxable on the recipients at whatever age you die.
