The infamous ‘IR35’ dates from the Gordon Brown (kids etc.) era. It was intended to stop contractors effectively working for companies as if self-employed and avoiding many of the costs, NI for one, of being employed; for both the non-employee and employer. It has been notoriously difficult to enforce, and has done little or nothing to stop the Deliveroos of this world using armies of piece-work self-employees. It’s only, in reality, government departments which have followed its letter, and in trying to make it work, HMRC has pursued, rather than big companies with armies of lawyers, individuals, often high profile media stars. They’ve argued that, if they have a regular slot on a TV programme, for instance, they can’t claim to be contractors. Kaye Adams dogged refusal to give in has won the day, and HMRC have, it seems given up. You may remember that Liz and Kwai’s equally infamous budget briefly abolished IR35. Which may not have been such a bad thing after all.
“Overtaxed savers reclaim £1.3bn on pension withdrawals since 2015”
This is an issue well-known to many of our clients. If you do want or have to dip into your pension pot and you’ve used up all of your tax-free allowance, the pension company will usually take tax based on an ‘emergency’ tax code.