IR35 AND CLIENT REASONABLE CARE

What is it? HMRC provides highly ambiguous guidance. The seeds of doubt dissuade some clients from embracing outside IR35. Those that resolve the ambiguity will steal a march. In April.

What’s the role of an IR35 assessment tool, such as CEST or one of many commercial services? Answer a bunch of questions, bung them into a sausage machine and await the mystical outcome. How is that reasonable care? Especially when the result may differ from one sausage machine to the next?

The main drivers of IR35 status and their relative weights are known. Perhaps reasonable care is about defining a clear intent to engage a given contractor, either as a personal service or a commercial service. Intentionally procure a contract OF service or a contract FOR services. Derive working practices and contractual terms accordingly. Clients that choose contracts FOR services, embracing outside IR35, will win the talent acquisition and retention war. It’s about clear-cut engagement models that would produce the same outcome in any IR35 sausage machine. Rendering them redundant?

Deriving a compliant outside IR35 engagement model with requisite working practices and contractual attributes is child’s play. We’ve done it. Recruiters and clients can have it. For free.