Have you sorted your IR35 arrangements yet?
The rules around IR35 are due to change in April 2020 and whilst that might seem along time away in fact you may well be engaging with contractors right now who will still be in place come the changes.
If the people I speak to every day about the subject of IR35 are anything to go by then there’s a distinct lack of awareness on the subject.
The problem is, of course that ignorance isn’t a defence in law and if you haven’t started to make preparations then you may well be caught out.
So why should you be worried?
Well to start with you need to understand the rules.
Which is all well and good but HMRC hasn’t published the final rules yet. Having said that we can say that we pretty much know what is going to be in there.
A badly thought out response to IR35 will cause you problems, either through penalties and interest or by increasing the cost and difficulty of finding good contractors.
So why shouldn’t you be worried?
Actually for well organised companies the changes shouldn’t cause too much of a problem.
Sure you’ll need to put in place systems to assess your contractor’s statuses (statii?)
And you’ll need to have a way of producing, documenting and distributing determinations.
But if you are already using contractors and they fall outside of IR35 now then all you need to do is have a way of proving it.
And if you are an official small or micro company then you probably won’t get caught up in all of this.
So what should you do?
The simple answer is to read and inwardly digest the rules around IR35. Then work up a plan to deal with it.
You can take the approach that you are going to become a subject matter expert or you can invest in some training.
Either way pretending it will all go away is unfortunately not an option.
Here’s a thing – I do an awesome IR35 training course. It’s cheap and good and it’s delivered by someone who has spent the last 19 years living with IR35.
As a starting point why not download my free white paper on practical IR35 for the private sector? It’s totally free and when you sign up you’ll get added to my IR35 list which will get you all the latest on this issue delivered directly to your inbox.