I have found and reported a number of errors on various GOV.UK pages including one that made a legally incorrect statement regarding P11Ds. I know of others who have reported other pages for inaccuracy, missing information etc.
From my reports only the P11D was acknowledged and corrected after about 6 weeks.
Yet the stream of self-congratulatory tweets about their wonderful 'agile' processes, user reviews and testing, classes for third-parties, awards won etc continue daily, whilst any criticisms or reports of errors go unanswered.
There are some incredibly talented and skilled people at GDS, but in my opinion they have, like many bureaucracies, grown too large and become self-replicating, whilst losing site of why they were set up in the first place and the reason they exist. My impression is that the 'methodology' has become more important than the outputs from it, and that building the actual web pages is seen as an annoyance which gets in the way of the technology and 'agile' processes.
This seems to me to be yet another attempt to extract tax from easy targets by any means possible, rather than go after the more difficult (and yet probably much more lucrative) avoiders like Vodafone, Starbucks etc.
After all these years, and having ready the recent IR35 'guidance' on HMRC, it still isn't at all clear when IR35 might apply. Every single quoted 'case' or 'example' seems to be about a PSC providing a service to a single client.
What about companies like mine? For the last 40 years I have provided services to multiple clients simultaneously, mostly working from home, but occasionally on-site. I have no employment rights at those clients, I control my own time and location of work for the most part, my company pays my expenses for travel and accomodation etc when needed - sometimes recoverable from clients, sometime not, I have to provide my own materials and capital equipment etc. I contract in other workers to cover my clients if I'm not available, and my wife also provides services to clients through my company and charges her time out.
Yet HMRC obviously think that I'm creaming the system and doing them out of billions of pouinds of tax revenue. (I must be, because last year my total income came to almost £25,000 - think how many warships the tax on that could buy!).
I'm hopefully going to live long enough to retire (itself becoming an ever more distant prospect after having lost pension rights through Equitable Life, and then the SERPS in/out fiasco, not to mention the raising of the pension age), and yet the only thing HMRC can find to think about is the huge amount of tax I must be saving by operating a perfectly legitimate (and legal) business.
I'm more than happy to pay my fair share of tax, but this constant atmosphere of persecution simply because I'm trying to earn a living really is beginning to make me wish I'd emigrated. I'd feel slightly less aggrieved if HMRC themselves hadn't used exactly the same PSC/single client contract arrangements themselves to avoid paying NIC, SSP etc to their top 'consultants'!
I have reported errors (usually just grammar or typos), but also - in one case - navigation (marine that is) information that was misleading and incorrect. In all cases, my reports have been resoundingly ignored and the errors left...
The GDS team espouses good aims, and they use Agile development methodologies (though how well applied is a moot point) to research user interaction with the site as it develops and supposedly to ensure that it is usuable by the vast majority of 'clients' of Gov.uk. This is all very admirable, but (as an old git software developer) having looked carefully at the 'person specifications' for various posts, and also knowing someone who is in the GDS team, it is obvious that it has a very young culture, employing some very clever young people.
Unfortunately, that rather misses the point that the majority of users of GOV.UK that struggle with it are either elderly or otherwise computer disenfranchised people, or people with extensive experience in either the legislation that GOV.UK is supposed to be informing about, or experienced in interacting with government over many years. Almost none of the people on the team seem to have eny experience of gov.uk as either a claimant, business user, service provider (eg accountants, harbour authorities etc) or as someone lacking the knowledge or skills to traverse the system whether through unfamiliarty or disability.
The consequence is - like so many government initiatives - that it looks perfect to the people designing and building it, it looks good to the ministers commissioning it (because they never have to more than skim it superficially but it only actually works for people who have the same level of computer literacy and mindset of the builders in the GDS team.
This is a great shame, because the idea behind the re-design is laudable, but it starts from the wrong viewpoint: that because something is 'complicated' it is necessarily 'difficult' both to understand and use. In fact, what is off-putting to many people is not the complexity, but the fact that it is on-line and the interface to the information is not in a form with which they are either familiar (ie paper) or accessed by interacting with a person rather than on-line.
There are some government websites that couldn't fail to be improved no matter how badly they were redesigned (the non-domestic RHI application section of OFGEM springs to mind - which is an absolute exemplar of how not to design an interactive site). But many on-line services (eg self-assessment etc) have evolved over time into complex, but perfectly usable systems to anyone reasonably computer literate (eg who knows how to complete their tax return) and their 'dumbing-down' just makes things more difficult for everybody.
I've now received two of these. I rang HMRC after the first one, pointing out that - in common with many businesses - it isn't always possible for us to pay on the same day of the month (last day is usual in our case) and that we always run the PAYE and make the submission consecutively whenever it is done. (We also make our payments quartetly as we always have done...)
The lady on the phone said not to worry and to ignore the notices.
I also pointed out that the description of how to read these RTI notices given in the notification email bore no relation to how you actually have to do it. She said she would pass that comment on, but the most recent email still mentions a number of items you should select or click through on the HRMC site that do not exist (either at all, or in the places mentioned).
Menawhile there are over 300 people employed in the Cabinet Office attempting to bring cohesion and simplicity to the government's web offerings - shame they don't actually appear to be working on any of the web-sites people actually have to use day-to-day!
And it stilldoesnt' remove the uncertainty either...
... because the tests still don't addresss the definition of 'service' companies, or of contractors like myself with multiple clients, and yet with no formal contracts.
For example, given that I provide, specify, monitor and supply (or order as appropriate) all the IT and connectivity for one particular client, I could reasonably be considered to be a controlling person, yet I have no written contract, no agreed hours of work, provide my own equipment (even on site), sell equipment at a profit through my 'service' company to this client as well as others, control my own hours of work and also subsititute other contractors when I am not available - whom I pay on an on-call basis. I have done this now for five years for this particular client, whilst still doing business with other clients. Some of that business is undertaken by the other director/employee of the company, so I cannot see how it can possibly be a 'service' company in the HMRC sense, but nevertheless the entire company mainly provides services, rather than goods.
So, where do I fit on the risk scale 8) ?
What's even more amazing is that it appears that some senior civil servants (including BBC employees) have effectively been operating arrangements that clearly fall foul of IR35 for some time, with full knowledge of HMRC it would seem, and yet nothing at all has been said or done - until the sh*t hit the fan recently. As always, its so much easier (both legally and politically) to go after the small-fry than the people actually abusing the system, so - once again - it's the small entrepreneur who suffers whilst the mandarins do as they please.
HMRC could raise more money by pursuing just one of the major tax 'avoiders' (Vodafone, Starbucks, Amazon etc etc) than they have in 10 years of pointless, mostly failed, investigations. Perhaps the recent publicity will concentrate minds a bit, but I'm not holding my breath...
"working for clients without a contract verbal or written"
requires a little clarification, because in law I suspect a contract would be deemed to exist if, for example, someone approached me to undertake a task (such as virus removal) on their machine - something I might do for a fixed fee. I think such client would be flabbergasted to now find that they are my employer though (under the employment laws), and I'd like to see HMRC prove it. Be marvellous though wouldn't it - after all, if I became ill whilst doing this 1 hour, fixed fee contract for a few quid, they might have to pay me statutory sick pay for weeks. What about if my wife was pregnant - would they be liable for my paternity leave?
providing your own equipment and running costs etc to do the work
working for multiple clients and controlling the hours you work for them
charging by time worked etc
working for clients without a contract verbal or written
On the above guidance, I score badly because I work from home, I employ my wife (MAAT qualified) as the company accountant, and I pay some (but not all) of the company's income out as dividends. Despite that I have operated in this way for over 30 years and never once been investigated.
I also noticed that the latest on-line submission system asks about 'service' companies, enquiring if the main income is derived from the work of one person (yes) who is 'contracted' to another company - AHA no!, because I work for multiple clients and have NO contracts. So I could legitimately answer that my company was not a service company...
The whole thing is such a mess, surely HRMC have better things to do?
And what about the senior public servants who have been avoiding tax/NI by paying themselves through such 'service' companies - have any of them had an IR35 investigation? Why not? Perhaps some of them work for HMRC?
This is a reassuring case - despite the fact that my (IT consultancy) company has two employees, plus two other freelance contractors on call, who substitute for me with my largest (but not only) client, I still fear the dead hand of HMRC and IR35 at every moment. The more so since, in this year's employer's PAYE return, the definition of 'service company' has been made so broad that I had no option but to answer 'yes' - in fact, it is hard to imagine many companies now that are not 'service' companies in the definition given - garages, builders (rather than developers), Royal Mail - they are all covered by this new definition.
I look forward to HMRC trying to apply IR35 to the chaiman of Royal Mail...
I've been considering moving to France for a while: it's hard enough trying to make a living in this country as it is, without having to fight one's own government as well.
Northern france is actually closer to my main client in London than where I am now 8)
Indeed, my company's largest (but not only) contract has a MINIMUM term of 5 years.
Yet it would be hard to argue, even though that company does provide a large percentage (>80% at times, but not constantly) of my company's income, that I am an employee of that third party:
I am not the only employee of my ltd company that works on the contract.
MY company provides all materials, and specifies what hours are spent on the contract, subject only to on-call demands for support, which are given priority over other work.
Both I and my other employees are free to (and do) work on other projects at any time.
None of us engaged on this particular contract are based in (or even near) the main contractee, and we only attend on site when needed as part of the work.
The work done on the contract is billed by the hour and at differing rates depending on who has been tasked with the work and the nature of it.
We have a number of different clients, and also operate a small retail business.
Yet despite all that, we undoubtedly do provide a service to that contractee, and yet I still answer 'no' to the question "Are you a service Company" - as advised by the company accountant - to avoid the risk of falling arbitrarily within the IR35 legislation.
The trouble is that, like most legislation produced in the past few years, IR35 was thought up by someone with no business experience, sitting in an office miles away from anyone with any real-world knowledge, and under pressure from ministers, Treasury etc to come up with something quickly - hence the total mess that it is.
IR35 needs (and is now hopefully getting) a complete rethink. It seems to allow those who were able to afford to evade tax before to continue to do so, whilst catching many others. like myself, who are simply trying to run a business!
Despite the name of this site, not all of us in here are accountants!
That doesn't stop us having an interest in accounting matters though, especially (as in my case) I'm responsible for both implementing and maintaining accounting systems, and directly affected by things such as IR35...
My answers
I have found and reported a number of errors on various GOV.UK pages including one that made a legally incorrect statement regarding P11Ds. I know of others who have reported other pages for inaccuracy, missing information etc.
From my reports only the P11D was acknowledged and corrected after about 6 weeks.
Yet the stream of self-congratulatory tweets about their wonderful 'agile' processes, user reviews and testing, classes for third-parties, awards won etc continue daily, whilst any criticisms or reports of errors go unanswered.
There are some incredibly talented and skilled people at GDS, but in my opinion they have, like many bureaucracies, grown too large and become self-replicating, whilst losing site of why they were set up in the first place and the reason they exist. My impression is that the 'methodology' has become more important than the outputs from it, and that building the actual web pages is seen as an annoyance which gets in the way of the technology and 'agile' processes.
IR35 mess continues
This seems to me to be yet another attempt to extract tax from easy targets by any means possible, rather than go after the more difficult (and yet probably much more lucrative) avoiders like Vodafone, Starbucks etc.
After all these years, and having ready the recent IR35 'guidance' on HMRC, it still isn't at all clear when IR35 might apply. Every single quoted 'case' or 'example' seems to be about a PSC providing a service to a single client.
What about companies like mine? For the last 40 years I have provided services to multiple clients simultaneously, mostly working from home, but occasionally on-site. I have no employment rights at those clients, I control my own time and location of work for the most part, my company pays my expenses for travel and accomodation etc when needed - sometimes recoverable from clients, sometime not, I have to provide my own materials and capital equipment etc. I contract in other workers to cover my clients if I'm not available, and my wife also provides services to clients through my company and charges her time out.
Yet HMRC obviously think that I'm creaming the system and doing them out of billions of pouinds of tax revenue. (I must be, because last year my total income came to almost £25,000 - think how many warships the tax on that could buy!).
I'm hopefully going to live long enough to retire (itself becoming an ever more distant prospect after having lost pension rights through Equitable Life, and then the SERPS in/out fiasco, not to mention the raising of the pension age), and yet the only thing HMRC can find to think about is the huge amount of tax I must be saving by operating a perfectly legitimate (and legal) business.
I'm more than happy to pay my fair share of tax, but this constant atmosphere of persecution simply because I'm trying to earn a living really is beginning to make me wish I'd emigrated. I'd feel slightly less aggrieved if HMRC themselves hadn't used exactly the same PSC/single client contract arrangements themselves to avoid paying NIC, SSP etc to their top 'consultants'!
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
(Sorry, I'll get me coat...)
Gov.uk
I have reported errors (usually just grammar or typos), but also - in one case - navigation (marine that is) information that was misleading and incorrect. In all cases, my reports have been resoundingly ignored and the errors left...
The GDS team espouses good aims, and they use Agile development methodologies (though how well applied is a moot point) to research user interaction with the site as it develops and supposedly to ensure that it is usuable by the vast majority of 'clients' of Gov.uk. This is all very admirable, but (as an old git software developer) having looked carefully at the 'person specifications' for various posts, and also knowing someone who is in the GDS team, it is obvious that it has a very young culture, employing some very clever young people.
Unfortunately, that rather misses the point that the majority of users of GOV.UK that struggle with it are either elderly or otherwise computer disenfranchised people, or people with extensive experience in either the legislation that GOV.UK is supposed to be informing about, or experienced in interacting with government over many years. Almost none of the people on the team seem to have eny experience of gov.uk as either a claimant, business user, service provider (eg accountants, harbour authorities etc) or as someone lacking the knowledge or skills to traverse the system whether through unfamiliarty or disability.
The consequence is - like so many government initiatives - that it looks perfect to the people designing and building it, it looks good to the ministers commissioning it (because they never have to more than skim it superficially but it only actually works for people who have the same level of computer literacy and mindset of the builders in the GDS team.
This is a great shame, because the idea behind the re-design is laudable, but it starts from the wrong viewpoint: that because something is 'complicated' it is necessarily 'difficult' both to understand and use. In fact, what is off-putting to many people is not the complexity, but the fact that it is on-line and the interface to the information is not in a form with which they are either familiar (ie paper) or accessed by interacting with a person rather than on-line.
There are some government websites that couldn't fail to be improved no matter how badly they were redesigned (the non-domestic RHI application section of OFGEM springs to mind - which is an absolute exemplar of how not to design an interactive site). But many on-line services (eg self-assessment etc) have evolved over time into complex, but perfectly usable systems to anyone reasonably computer literate (eg who knows how to complete their tax return) and their 'dumbing-down' just makes things more difficult for everybody.
Ah well, nothing like progresss I suppose!
Delayed returns notices
I've now received two of these. I rang HMRC after the first one, pointing out that - in common with many businesses - it isn't always possible for us to pay on the same day of the month (last day is usual in our case) and that we always run the PAYE and make the submission consecutively whenever it is done. (We also make our payments quartetly as we always have done...)
The lady on the phone said not to worry and to ignore the notices.
I also pointed out that the description of how to read these RTI notices given in the notification email bore no relation to how you actually have to do it. She said she would pass that comment on, but the most recent email still mentions a number of items you should select or click through on the HRMC site that do not exist (either at all, or in the places mentioned).
Menawhile there are over 300 people employed in the Cabinet Office attempting to bring cohesion and simplicity to the government's web offerings - shame they don't actually appear to be working on any of the web-sites people actually have to use day-to-day!
And it stilldoesnt' remove the uncertainty either...
... because the tests still don't addresss the definition of 'service' companies, or of contractors like myself with multiple clients, and yet with no formal contracts.
For example, given that I provide, specify, monitor and supply (or order as appropriate) all the IT and connectivity for one particular client, I could reasonably be considered to be a controlling person, yet I have no written contract, no agreed hours of work, provide my own equipment (even on site), sell equipment at a profit through my 'service' company to this client as well as others, control my own hours of work and also subsititute other contractors when I am not available - whom I pay on an on-call basis. I have done this now for five years for this particular client, whilst still doing business with other clients. Some of that business is undertaken by the other director/employee of the company, so I cannot see how it can possibly be a 'service' company in the HMRC sense, but nevertheless the entire company mainly provides services, rather than goods.
So, where do I fit on the risk scale 8) ?
What's even more amazing is that it appears that some senior civil servants (including BBC employees) have effectively been operating arrangements that clearly fall foul of IR35 for some time, with full knowledge of HMRC it would seem, and yet nothing at all has been said or done - until the sh*t hit the fan recently. As always, its so much easier (both legally and politically) to go after the small-fry than the people actually abusing the system, so - once again - it's the small entrepreneur who suffers whilst the mandarins do as they please.
HMRC could raise more money by pursuing just one of the major tax 'avoiders' (Vodafone, Starbucks, Amazon etc etc) than they have in 10 years of pointless, mostly failed, investigations. Perhaps the recent publicity will concentrate minds a bit, but I'm not holding my breath...
Mike
Tests
Hmm,
perhaps this
"working for clients without a contract verbal or written"
requires a little clarification, because in law I suspect a contract would be deemed to exist if, for example, someone approached me to undertake a task (such as virus removal) on their machine - something I might do for a fixed fee. I think such client would be flabbergasted to now find that they are my employer though (under the employment laws), and I'd like to see HMRC prove it. Be marvellous though wouldn't it - after all, if I became ill whilst doing this 1 hour, fixed fee contract for a few quid, they might have to pay me statutory sick pay for weeks. What about if my wife was pregnant - would they be liable for my paternity leave?
What a joke!
Makes my blood boil too!
What about other criteria, no longer mentioned
For example:
supplying goods to your clients at a profit.
providing your own equipment and running costs etc to do the work
working for multiple clients and controlling the hours you work for them
charging by time worked etc
working for clients without a contract verbal or written
On the above guidance, I score badly because I work from home, I employ my wife (MAAT qualified) as the company accountant, and I pay some (but not all) of the company's income out as dividends. Despite that I have operated in this way for over 30 years and never once been investigated.
I also noticed that the latest on-line submission system asks about 'service' companies, enquiring if the main income is derived from the work of one person (yes) who is 'contracted' to another company - AHA no!, because I work for multiple clients and have NO contracts. So I could legitimately answer that my company was not a service company...
The whole thing is such a mess, surely HRMC have better things to do?
And what about the senior public servants who have been avoiding tax/NI by paying themselves through such 'service' companies - have any of them had an IR35 investigation? Why not? Perhaps some of them work for HMRC?
Mike
IR35 and Service Companies
This is a reassuring case - despite the fact that my (IT consultancy) company has two employees, plus two other freelance contractors on call, who substitute for me with my largest (but not only) client, I still fear the dead hand of HMRC and IR35 at every moment. The more so since, in this year's employer's PAYE return, the definition of 'service company' has been made so broad that I had no option but to answer 'yes' - in fact, it is hard to imagine many companies now that are not 'service' companies in the definition given - garages, builders (rather than developers), Royal Mail - they are all covered by this new definition.
I look forward to HMRC trying to apply IR35 to the chaiman of Royal Mail...
I've been considering moving to France for a while: it's hard enough trying to make a living in this country as it is, without having to fight one's own government as well.
Northern france is actually closer to my main client in London than where I am now 8)
mike
Another unlevel playing field
Indeed, my company's largest (but not only) contract has a MINIMUM term of 5 years.
Yet it would be hard to argue, even though that company does provide a large percentage (>80% at times, but not constantly) of my company's income, that I am an employee of that third party:
I am not the only employee of my ltd company that works on the contract.
MY company provides all materials, and specifies what hours are spent on the contract, subject only to on-call demands for support, which are given priority over other work.
Both I and my other employees are free to (and do) work on other projects at any time.
None of us engaged on this particular contract are based in (or even near) the main contractee, and we only attend on site when needed as part of the work.
The work done on the contract is billed by the hour and at differing rates depending on who has been tasked with the work and the nature of it.
We have a number of different clients, and also operate a small retail business.
Yet despite all that, we undoubtedly do provide a service to that contractee, and yet I still answer 'no' to the question "Are you a service Company" - as advised by the company accountant - to avoid the risk of falling arbitrarily within the IR35 legislation.
The trouble is that, like most legislation produced in the past few years, IR35 was thought up by someone with no business experience, sitting in an office miles away from anyone with any real-world knowledge, and under pressure from ministers, Treasury etc to come up with something quickly - hence the total mess that it is.
IR35 needs (and is now hopefully getting) a complete rethink. It seems to allow those who were able to afford to evade tax before to continue to do so, whilst catching many others. like myself, who are simply trying to run a business!
Accountants!
Despite the name of this site, not all of us in here are accountants!
That doesn't stop us having an interest in accounting matters though, especially (as in my case) I'm responsible for both implementing and maintaining accounting systems, and directly affected by things such as IR35...
8)