"The reforms are set to make medium and large-sized businesses responsible for determining the employment status of contractors, rather than the contractors themselves."
I am constantly surprised that el'Reg, a techie publication with a large contractor readership, keeps making mistakes like this.
IR35 has nothing to do with employment status, and therefore the reforms have no effect on who has responsibility for determining the employment status of contractors.
What it does is move the responsibility to determine employment status *for tax purposes*. While this sounds similar, it is a very different thing. If it was about determining their employment status, one found inside IR35 would become, effectively, an employee of the company, with all the rights and benefits that entails. Instead, this basically just nullifies the existence of the contractor's company and taxes the entire fee that the company is being paid as if it were the salary of the contractor. It is for tax purposes only, not employment purposes, and ensures that an inside-IR35 contractor pays more tax than an equivalent employee while receiving none of their benefits (from the "deemed employer" or the government).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
