IR35 Reforms – The Impact So Far?

What impact have we seen to date?

It’s been more than two months since the introduction of reforms to the IR35 rules. In that time, our assessment platform, IR35 Complete™, has been used to assess contractors from over 750 hiring organisations across numerous industry sectors.

Naturally, this scale of deployment leads to a healthy data set, offering valuable insight into what’s happening in the marketplace.

To date, 18.9% of the off-payroll status determination assessments carried out through IR35 Complete™ have identified that the hiring organisation is in fact not responsible for producing an assessment due to them qualifying for the “small company exemption”. In such scenarios, the IR35 assessment responsibility continues to sit with the worker themselves. The IR35 Complete™ assessment process specifically screens hiring organisations based on their size to ensure that supply chains don’t become polluted with invalid Status Determination Statements produced by exempted hirers.

‘Inside’ IR35 determinations account for just 28.2% of determinations made. This is interesting because of pre-April concerns that many more contractors were going to be officially classified as ‘inside’ IR35. Of course, there are still some applications of blanket ‘inside’ IR35 decisions that aren’t reflected in this figure, but we believe this statistic speaks volumes about the value of carrying out genuine assessments. When roles are properly assessed, falling ‘inside’ of IR35 is much less common, indicating the unfairness of large-scale blanket ‘inside’ IR35 determinations.

‘Outside’ IR35 determinations show up in 52.8% of cases. When we consider that, in practice, this number can most likely be combined with the 18.9% of cases where the worker remains responsible for their own IR35 determination, that effectively means that in nearly three-quarters of cases, there is no change of IR35 status disruption injected into the supply chain; it’s effectively “business as usual”.

All of this underlines the need for quality, timely, and accurate IR35 assessments.

Contractors – how we can help

Did you know, you can access IR35 Complete™ to check what your status should be? Though your end hirer and/or agency will have the final say on whether you can work ‘outside’ IR35, it can be helpful to equip yourself with assessment data when discussing assignments with your agency or end hirer. Get in touch today on 01923 910833 and we’ll set up a quick and simple online assessment.

Agencies – how we can help

Agencies can sign up to IR35 Complete™ and use our platform to conduct fast and accurate assessments with insurable outcomes for all contractors.

Designed to keep all members of the supply chain safe, IR35 Complete™ is a fast and reliable way to manage IR35 obligations.

• Fair decisions – more correct ‘outside’ determinations vs CEST.
• Speed – fastest tool on the market, assessments completed within minutes.
• Branded – takes your clients on a branded journey.
• Automated workflow – reduces time spent monitoring and chasing SDSs.
• Role-based testing – for mass workforce evaluation.
• Detailed – reasons provided for each decision, facilitating change where appropriate.
• Cost-effective – great commercial offering for our customers.
• Decisive – delivers definitive answers quickly with no need for manual review.
• Integrated – integrate the platform into your CRM.
• Insurable – we can insure you against investigations and tax losses.
• User profiles – user and super-user profiles for easy portfolio management.
• User activity – logs other pre-determined status determinations and allows users to upload evidence.

To find out more about IR35 Complete™ or book a demo, contact our Business Manager, Stuart Marquis, on 07791 153741.