1. You are the “end user” and since April 2021 (provided you are not classified as a small business) are the entity responsible for making the tax determination for your contractors and the roles within your business. For many years now the onus has been on the contractor themselves to determine their tax status that changed in April 2021 to enable the Inland Revenue (IR) to hold the end user directly accountable. This means that the IR no longer need to chase individual contractors around the market but they can target contractors on mass if they believe there is a manipulation of the legislation occurring and there is a case for inferred employment.

2. You must complete an SDS. You would be amazed how many companies engage a contractor and just don’t ever do it.  An SDS is a Status Determination Statement. It is a set of questions designed to enable you to determine the tax status of the role/contractor yourself without the need for external expert help. You can do this via a number of different tools on the market. The most widely used one is the governments own CEST online test tool.

3. Remember the inland revenue themselves have an expectation that 70% of all assignments will still continue to sit outside of IR35, so don’t cut your nose off to spite your face and alienate a large population of contractors who will only work outside of IR35, especially when we live in a project driven world.